Brenda Coffee has had enough life experience to fill multiple memoirs. A longtime journalist, Coffee has driven an Army tank, spent close to a decade racing Porsches, explored abandoned mines, and navigated thick jungles in Mexico. A successful businesswoman, she runs a popular blog about money, life, and relationships for her audience of women over 50. But perhaps her bravest act, and the one that even readers with less colorful backgrounds will undoubtedly relate to, is her choice to speak her truth as a trauma survivor and share the story of the terrors she experienced throughout her marriage with Jon Philip Ray, a brilliant inventor with a dark secret.

Coffee’s memoir, Maya Blue, begins with a tense scene: a strange man jumping over the security gate around her and husband’s house. When Coffee opens the door to talk to him, he simply announces that he knows she “needs a bodyguard,” and that she and her husband “had better watch their step”:

My first inclination is to ask how he knows we need a bodyguard. Instead, I swallow the urge to engage him in conversation. This is the kind of moment I’m good at. Pretending I’m fine and not afraid of anything when I’m not fine. Dubious skills I’ve raised to an art form. In a tone as calm as his, I look at him and say, “You must have the wrong house.” We both know that’s not true. For starters, there are no other houses anywhere near where I live. I close the door in his face and watch him retrace his steps down the hill. He pauses for a moment until he sees me, standing in the window, watching him through the binoculars. For a time, he fades from view, concealed by the six matching post oak trees that arch from either side of my driveway and meet in the middle like a dappled green porte cochere. When he emerges on the other side of the trees, he vaults over the gate, swinging his body in one continuous movement as though he’s an Olympic gymnast. I watch as he crosses the road and disappears down the access road of the freeway like he’s never been to my house and knows nothing about me or my husband, Philip.

Coffee knows exactly why strange men are watching her house, and to say that she’s had practice “pretending [she’s] fine and not afraid of anything” is a massive understatement.

Maya Blue is, as Coffee puts it, “Working Girl meets Taken.” A starred Kirkus review calls it a “raw memoir” that “explores one woman’s remarkably dramatic history” and “consistently delivers unexpected twists and sharp insights.”

Coffee, who lives in Texas and jokingly describes her current focus on her writing career as “being a starving artist,” took a long time to come around to writing this memoir. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be public about what exactly Ray was up to, hidden away in their remote house and running a homemade drug lab.

The original version of Maya Blue wasn’t even a memoir; it was a work of fiction Coffee wrote 20 years ago. “There are a number of things that I was afraid of people knowing were real,” she says. “My husband had learned how to make cocaine from scratch, and you never know who’s going to come after you because they think you know how to do something like that.”

But the fictionalized version never came to be, and when the Covid-19 lockdowns came, Coffee reconsidered the manuscript. Years had passed, she had time on her hands, and she decided that since she’d already written about things like, for instance, her experience being kidnapped at gunpoint in the jungles of Guatemala, then maybe she could be honest about more of her life.

“It was hardest to write about my husband,” she says, “because he was so well respected and loved and admired. I spent so much time and effort making sure nobody knew what he was doing. So when I did start writing, I felt like I was betraying him.” As challenging as it was, Coffee enlisted the help of a talented editor and faced her complicated emotions around Ray. She’d built up so much of herself during their marriage around what would please him. “And in that process, I gave away my voice. Which is your power. And when I was writing the book, I realized how much I had given away [to him].”

As Coffee dug deeper into her feelings, she realized that she was the one who had been betrayed by Ray, not the other way around. And while that was difficult to come to terms with, she realized that by speaking her truth, she could survive anything. Instead of trying to fit an external expectation, she could embrace her own voice and power.

Coffee hopes her story shows readers that they already have everything they need within themselves to overcome adversity. “Everyone is going to be tested at some point in their lives,” she says, “but you need to know that you’re stronger than you could ever imagine. I hope my story gives voice to my readers’ voices, and more than that, I hope it offers them strength.”

The title of the book, Maya Blue, is a reference to this idea; Maya Blue is a real color, an ancient pigment from the Mayan civilization known for its extraordinary vibrancy and durability. When Coffee was being held in the jungles in Guatemala, she says she was near a Mayan ruin and could see pieces painted with the vivid blue on the forest floor. “It’s a metaphor for the strength and resilience of all of us,” she says. “We’re all surviving something.”

Now that the memoir she worked so hard to complete is out in the world, Coffee says sharing her story has been “really gratifying.” She was featured on a popular podcast called This Is Actually Happening, and as a result has been flooded with responses from readers and listeners. Maya Blue not only received a Kirkus star but was also named one of Kirkus’s “100 Best Indie Books of 2025,” as well as one of Maria Shriver’s “2025 Best Summer Reads.”

Coffee says that she has “at least” two more books in the works. One idea that’s particularly important to her involves the disappearance of one of Coffee’s dear friends, whom she last saw when the friend was staying with her and received the news that her husband had been shot. The friend went home, and Coffee never heard from her again. Coffee is in the beginning stages of research to try and discover what happened.

Readers of Maya Blue will not be surprised to hear that the details of Coffee’s lost friendship are fascinating even on a surface level, but they’ll have to wait until she’s finished the project to learn more. She’s still very much in the research stage, but a seasoned journalist like Coffee knows a good story, and her positive experiences with the success of Maya Blue are encouraging her to follow her instincts.

“I’m fearless,” she says. “I learned from my husband to think things through, so I’m also very judicious and measured, and that carries through to my writing. I’m not sure what direction this project will go, but I was recently up until 1:00 a.m. writing notes, so part of me thinks I’m committed!”

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn.