Publication Date: May 12, 2026
Sounds Like Trouble to Me sheds light on what happens when a corrections officer kills her abusive husband and suddenly finds herself on the other side of the law. Not only is she shocked with the systematic abuse against fellow female prisoners but confronted with the complicated history of her own abuse, she must struggle with her fragile memory to uncover what actually happened before she goes to trial. It is the women she meets that change her, and in the end, she spurs on a MeToo movement behind bars.
A corrections officer abused by her husband gets a terrifying education on the systematic offenses against female prisoners in Jean Trounstine’s emotionally resonant debut, Sounds Like Trouble to Me.
On the morning of her wedding anniversary, Nettie Murphy shoots and kills her husband, Roger. Battered and physically abused by Roger for years, Nettie finds herself on the other side of the law, entering a Massachusetts female prison where inmates give her grief for being a “hack”—a former corrections officer, or CO. Her memory of the event is spotty and darkened by extreme trauma. Her paralegal sister, Claudia, realizes Nettie needs a lawyer who understands women driven to violence to defend themselves: Isabella Archer.
Isabella has her own problems, however: a sarcastic, rebellious teenage daughter and a husband working long-distance in New York City. Still reeling from a miscarriage and the loss of a high-profile case involving a battered woman who killed her abuser, Isabella is hesitant to take Nettie’s case. But something about Nettie’s case intrigues Isabella, and she takes her case on, imploring Nettie to recover her memories of how she came to shoot Roger. The preparation for trial will take both women on a year-long journey of self-discovery and empowering other women to fight injustice.
Trounstine, who has written extensively about the criminal legal system in America, puts her knowledge to superb use in this page-turning and passionate cri de coeur of the ways women are vilified and victimized, both inside and outside the justice system. Her story encompasses a diverse cross-section of American women, alternating chapters between different characters and their experiences. There is Mali, a Native American woman desperately trying to achieve bail to care for a mother going through chemotherapy, who becomes Nettie’s first and truest friend in lockup. Gracie, Nettie’s niece, represents the trials of young girls coming into adolescence, who inspires her aunt to start her own #MeToo movement behind bars.
Pleading not guilty, Nettie at first focuses on keeping her mouth shut inside the prison, but when she experiences inappropriate and illegal contact from a slimy male CO, her protective instincts take charge as she leads Mali and a circle of other women to start documenting the abuse. The novel’s heart pulses with these imprisoned women, their tender friendships and alliances, where strangers with varied backgrounds find common ground.
Trounstine creates authentic and moving characters whose voices capture the anguish, confusion, and rage of women whose suffering cannot be contained within platitudes or tidy bromides. Her protagonists fight back but still reap the dire consequences from state-appointed psychiatrists, guards, and officials who try to silence them. But Nettie, Isabella, and their network of allies will not stop until the truth comes out.
Written with empathy and keen perception, Sounds Like Trouble to Me takes readers behind the barbed wire to reveal a brave #MeToo movement fighting for justice at all costs.
Jean Trounstine is the author of eight books, an activist and educator, who has written extensively about the criminal legal system in America. She worked at Framingham Women’s Prison for a decade, where she directed eight plays for prisoners–resulting in her highly praised book, Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison. Her groundbreaking work is considered the first prison Shakespeare program launched in the United States. Trounstine has spoken throughout the world about women in prison and co-founded the women’s branch of Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL), an innovative alternative sentencing program. As a journalist, she writes on prison and parole for Boston Institute of Nonprofit Journalism, Truthout, Boston Magazine, and others. In 2018, she was invited to Italy and awarded the Gramsci International Award for Theatre in Prison for her 30 years of work in literature and theatre.
Her nonfiction book Boy With a Knife: A Story of Murder, Remorse, and a Prisoner’s Fight for Justice (IG, 2016) examines the moral and legal failures of sentencing juveniles to adult prisons. Following the successful release of Motherlove, her book of short stories in 2024 from Concord Free Press, Sounds Like Trouble to Me is her debut novel.
