I have an anonymous request for a “Good Shit vs. Shit to Avoid” list:
Like many of us, I cope with things by reading about them, and I love finding a book about someone who has problems similar to mine and is able to thrive. I was recently diagnosed with a chronic condition that will almost certainly affect the rest of my life. It’s not fatal, and it’s not degenerative, but it is likely to lead to some level of physical disability in the future.
I am thus wondering about books with heroines who are physically disabled. I know there are books with deaf/Deaf heroines (I thoroughly enjoyed Tessa Dare’s Three Nights with a Scoundrel), but I’m primarily interested in reading about women with physical limitations—damaged legs, missing arms, confined to a wheelchair, suffering from multiple sclerosis, etc. One-eyed race car drivers need not apply.
There are heroes with war wounds, but I’ve encountered very few heroines with similar disabilities. My taste is kind of narrow—I love Julia Quinn, Tessa Dare, Loretta Chase, and most Lisa Kleypas for historicals (I have read Seduce Me at Sunrise, btw, and I’m just thinking I’ll go back and reread Win’s story…). I love Victoria Dahl (historicals and contemp), Jenny Crusie, and Nora Roberts. I much prefer fluff to angst, and I’m not really all that into paranormal romance, though I’m always willing to give things a shot.
I thought maybe the Bitchery could help me out here.
My first thought is Whisper Falls by Toni Blake, which features a heroine with Crohn’s Disease, among the Most Unsexy Chronic Ailments Ever, who doesn’t get better magically by the end of the book.
But I don’t recall any heroines with chronic, potentially debilitating problems like MS or fibromyalgia, for example. Do you know of any?
Thanks for all the recs! I’m glad Catherine Anderson has been anti-recommended, because I tried to read one of her books once and was utterly unable to get anywhere. I don’t even remember why—just an overwhelming sense of ICK.
I asked for visible disabilities in large part because I know that “invisible” conditions like fibromyalgia, Crohn’s, or various autoimmune disorders (including early stage MS, early stage RA, and scleroderma) are less likely to show up…even though my own brand-new diagnosis is actually in that category. I was afraid that there would be a lot of STA out there, but I knew the Bitchery would have at least a few good recommendations for the GS side of things.
I’m also definitely not surprised that disability is treated badly in romance. For all of its good qualities, there are things romance does not do well—far too much Cured By Magical Wang running around, for one thing. It also manages adult virginity badly, and most of the time I think has issues with race. I don’t actually *need* romance or a good heroine to help me come to terms with things. I pay a therapist for that. 😀 But I do always feel better when I run across women I can identify with who share my issues—mental, physical, or emotional. The presence of disability in romance fiction in the heroes actually isn’t enough for me. I need for there to be heroines—even if some of them think they’re “burdens.” Sadly, I actually already have that idea in my own head (and I did before I found out about my condition), so I can relate. It’s not healthy, but it’s there.
I’ve already downloaded Dancing in the Moonlight, and I’m going to look for Out of the Blue and Whisper Falls.
A Notorious Love by Sabrina Jeffries has a heroine who had polio and now has a weak leg. Therefore she has a limp, can’t dance, can’t ride, etc. It’s a historical and I liked it a lot.
There’s an interesting round-up on this subject, including some feedback from members of the related disabled communities, at http://www.likesbooks.com/116.html
@JaniceG:
This says everything about how she could think Justine Davis’ shittastic Holt trilogy was respectful of disabled people. The Morning Side of Dawn totally took years off my life.
I would recommend A Notorious Love by Sabrina Jeffries. The heroine has a hip/leg disability – I can’t remember if it was from an injury or from birth but it was a great book.
I also have to second (or third) Halfway to Heaven by Susan Wiggs. That was a great book and a not very common time period/setting combination.
I’ll follow up on the mention of Clear Water and ADHD. I read it mostly because of the character with ADHD and while I don’t have it either, my young son does. I felt that the development of Patrick matched what I see in my son and I think it helped me understand his frustations (and my own) a little better. Amy Lane said on her blog that her own son has ADHD and that was where a lot of her inspiration came from.
I’d just like to second the recommendations for Whisper Falls by Toni Blake and Halfway to Heaven by Susan Wiggs. And I would encourage all of you who have invisible disabilities (I’m a Fibromyalgia and RA patient with a smorgasbord of neuroendicrine problems) to check out The Spoon Theory mentioned earlier in the comments. The story does a good job of illustrating some of what it’s like to live with a chronic condition. Thanks to all of the commenters for the suggestions! My TBR pile just keeps growing and growing:)
Kathleen Eagle has a series about the Double D Ranch. The manager of the ranch has MS. In ‘Cool Hand Hank’ she is the heroine. I thought the descrition of her inabilities not bad.
Cheryl St. John wrote another western themed book with a diabled heroine: The Tenderfoot Bride. Liked the book. I’ve read others, especially one comes to mind but not author nor title. Perhaps it will come to me as the book was really well written
I’m the same way. I think Ridley is right, in general, but I don’t think I would mind a heroine who thinks she may be a burden (or acts on it) nearly as much as she does. Nor do I think that acting this way would necessarily make a heroine weak. Or at least then I would have to call myself weak for having those thoughts and worries. And I am not weak, thank you very much. I am just imperfect, and coping the best I can. This is a reason “Simply Love” by Mary Balogh irritated me. The concept is great in principle. A hero who was tortured and maimed in the war, and who does not want the relentless pity of his family who see him as a victim instead of a strong person who made his own choices. This part is good. But then he is portrayed as incredibly strong – someone who learned to ride by falling again and again, who keeps going in face of incredible pain. There seems to be no space in his life for doubt over himself or his abilities, or just any kind of weakness. He is supposed to be inspirational, and I found him horribly depressing, and even more so once the heroine convinces him to return to painting through the power of their love. It’s like there is no room there for genuine loss, or for someone who can stay less than perfectly inspirational in their strength and healing, a kind of poster example everyone disabled should aspire to, and I am never likely to reach 😉
Light of Day, by Ruth Wind
Remembered one more which is definitely STA for me: Sandra Schwab “Castle of the Wolf”. I found “Simply Love” was irritating and depressing, but it had enough of good stuff to not make it a complete loss. In comparison, “Castle of the Wolf” was a real mess. The hero has a wooden leg, and he has been badly betrayed. So yes, he had a raw deal in life. But he treats everyone around him truly atrociously, and people let him get away with it, because he is suffering so badly. Really? If I threw temper tantrums like that every time I am in pain, I would (quite deservedly) have no friends left in no time at all. And then he pulls out the “I am not worthy of anyone so wonderful” card, and uses this as a reason to put the heroine through an emotional wringer. By the end of that I was thinking, “you know what, you are right, you are not worthy of anyone”. He does grovel, but not nearly enough, and she just takes him back with no though of all the pain he has inflicted on her. This is a poster child for “disability does not make you a better person, and does not excuse abusive behavior”
@Emily
I agree with you, to a point. I’m a Black, queer (pansexual), mentally ill woman woman with some developmental disabilities as well. I use a service dog. I don’t exactly expect to see all of myself represented in romance novels, but when an author can get into the head of someone with a similar thought process and way of being? That’s one of my favorite things about reading
Sadly, I find more of that in fanfiction than profic, but such is life. I really liked The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie. I’d be even happier to read a book with a similar heroine. Still, considering the state of erasure women and girls with autism, ADHD and similar conditions experience in the real world, that’s not something I expect to see anytime soon. I’m hoping at some point to see a realistic depiction of an anxiety disorder, as well, in a protagonists of any gender.
I know, tall orders, but a girl can dream.
(Pool87? Yes, I bet it will take until I’m 87.)
For the GS category: Fay Robinson “A Man Like Mac”. The heroine is a competitive runner who suffered a permanent injury but has trouble coming to terms with it; the hero is a paraplegic. I could relate to her, and I really liked that neither of them is magically healed at the end, though the ending was good and satisfying. His portrayal seemed realistic, too, and he actually hangs out with other paraplegics, and they and their wives figure in the story in a sensible way, and help heroine figure things out. That just seemed so much more realistic than those situations where a fully able-bodied heroine heals the hero with the power of her love, based on magical insight and no outside help to deal with inevitable difficulties.
Myrna Mackenzie wrote a category with a heroine in a wheel chair. I don’t remember exactly why she was in a wheel chair, but she lived in a group home with several other disabled folk. I don’t remember much about the book and I don’t know much about the subject, so I can’t testify as to how accurate the depiction was. However, I do find her books in general have that overly sappy fairytale feel.
Carrie Lofty’s What a Scoundrel Wantss is a historical with a blind heroine. (Added bonus, the hero is Will Scarlet, buddy of one Robin Hood). Meg is an AWESOME character – she knows her mind, she is tough, sexy, likable and her blindness does not in any way define or limit her.
It was never actually diagnosed or described as such, and there are unquestionable problems with this book on the realism front (even leaving the fairies out of the equation for a moment), but as a person who suffers from an anxiety disorder, I actually read Jude in Nora Roberts’s Jewels of the Sun as someone with a similar problem. It’s arguably of the more short-term variety, or it’s perhaps brought on by the obvious depression she’s suffering, but I related to her intensely largely b/c she sounds exactly like I sound in my head. YMMV on that.
(And for that matter, several of Julia Quinn’s heroes have PTSD. With varying degrees of realism, of course.)
It’s not a book or a romance, but I think that “Murderball” is a very good portrayal of disability. It’s a documentary about young men who play wheelchair rugby. The film was nominated for an Oscar; it lost to “March of the Penguins”, but I liked it better. You go in thinking about what these men have lost, but you watch it and come out thinking about all that they still have and who they are—young and competitive and funny and interested in sex. In other words, they are complex people, and their disability is clearly a part of who they are but it is by no means the whole.
Thanks, snarkhunter!
@miz_geek – OMG!! I had NO IDEA that a romance with a Celiac heroine existed. Thanks for mentioning it. I have Celiac – that’s why I’m omg-ing like a teenager – and I’ve thought for awhile (ok, the entire 10 years since my diagnosis) that Celiac would be interesting in a romance – I was engaged when I was diagnosed so I avoided the whole dating while gluten free adventure, but it would definitely add a few layers to dating.
I’ve just downloaded SEALed with a Kiss to my Nook – there’s no mention of Celiac in the blurbs and I’m generally not a fan of Navy SEALs romances, so I would have never found this on my own. I have never read a book with a character with Celiac., so I’m super excited that this book exists, but I’m also kind of afraid to read it, because what if it sucks? If I actually read it, I’ll report back.
If you don’t mind m/m romance (or if you find it as incredibly hot as I do) you could try some of Josh Lanyon’s books. Many of his books feature a character with a chronic medical condition. Cards on the Table is a short story featuring a hero who has recently acquired a seizure disorder after a car accident and is still struggling to accept his new limitations. The Adrien English Mysteries features a main character with a chronic and progressive heart condition. One of the main characters in The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks has asthma (I wheezed my way through that one, so I can say that the depiction was pretty accurate) and Fair Game stars an ex-FBI agent who was shot in the leg and is still recovering and adjusting to life with a limp.
Also, you could try KA Mitchell’s Regularly Scheduled Life, where one of the heroes in an already established relationship is shot in the leg. The story follows them through the aftermath of the shooting as they try to get back to a normal life. It’s a good hurt/comfort story, but the man is left with a permanent limp so I think it fits your criteria. The sex in this one can be pretty graphic, so if you’re not sure about the m/m genre, I’d stick to the Lanyon stories, starting with Cards on the Table since it’s short, there isn’t a lot of sex, and it’s very good.
It’s only right at the end, like the last two chapters, and they are pretty sugar-floss-happy about dealing with it, but Pamela Clare’s Naked Edge ends with a guy who loses his leg while saving the heroine. I was impressed with a story that allowed the main characters to be reastically injured by their daring-do… But the way he feels about his prostethic is nowhere near as realistic as Dancing in the Moonlight, which was impressive (and though it was a visible disability, felt emotionally like my post-viral/MS thing that I had for 10 years, so it rang true for me.)
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WTF! I don’t have a ADHD but I have lived my whole life with someone who does. I know a lot of people in fact. In general, the whole living well shit. Everyone, even normal people, do better when they eat well and take care of themselves. I don’t know of any special ADHD diet. The author sounds like a hack to me. Different people react to different foods differently. That’s also true of everybody.
I second Cheryl’s rec for Josh Lanyan books. They are beautifully written, and I’d add “Come Unto These Yellow Sands” for someone dealing with addiction (recovered, but apparently not something you ever leave behind).
Thanks @KerriD for the follow up on Clear Water and ADHD! Good to know it’s a pretty accurate portrayal. It sounded like it would be, but you just never know unless you’ve lived it or hear from someone who has.
Also shyness is common in books, but Julia Quinn’s heroine in The Lady Most Likely was so painfully shy I almost wondered if she had Social Anxiety Disorder. She does come out of her shell a little at the end but it wasn’t completely gone.
@Emily – he wasn’t on a special diet in the book. (Nor did I say he was.) And yes, taking care of ourselves is important for all of us, but when there are additional stresses on our bodies or minds, it takes on a greater importance.
Please don’t judge the book, and especially not the author, on my extremely hurried attempt to sum up a tiny bit of what was going on in the book. Call me a hack if you like, but judge the author on what she has written, rather than what I’ve written.
MD – I agree with that. It’s hard to find middle ground between those characters who are completely destroyed by their hardship (be it disability or illness or abuse) and those (really irritating) heroic inspirations who triumph over all adversity without room for grief or anger or admitting they actually can’t do everything. I notice this syndrome the most in characters who have PTSD or were abused (because those are the issues I live with). I guess it’s good that PTSD is more visible now and is showing up in fiction, but I wish there were more characters shown MANAGING their ptsd symptoms, instead of being completely controlled by them or being magically cured by true luuv.
Interesting!
I have fibromyalgia, ME and almost crippling IBS, which impacts my life in every single way, and one of my coping mechanisms is reading. Having said that, I’m not sure if it would make me feel worse or better to read about a heroine who finds a romantic HEA while dealing with similar issues.
@ Deb
I know people with ADHD (I am close to several of them). I know what they need and how they live their lives. Please don’t say that having ADHD means you have to take better care of yourself than most. Everyone needs to take care of themselves, and the people I know with ADHD don’t try to take better or worse care of themselves than any of the other people I know.
Anyway this blog was supposed to physical disabilities not whatever….
I second Murderball as an awesome documentary and What a scoundrel Wants as an awesome romance. The hero in Tessa Dare’s “One Dance with a Duke” has some sort of social anxiety disorder that goes beyond shyness into full-blown, devastating anxiety attacks.
Someone – I think Kathleen Eagle – had a story about a female Vietnam veteran with PTSD – I think it was called “A Soldier’s Heart.”
Rachel Lee has several heroes who are disabled in some way – chronic pain in “Miss Emmaline and the Archangel,” PTSD in “Lost Warriors” and “Exile’s End.”
The heroine in Nora Roberts’ “Angel’s Fall” also has PTSD.
The heroine in “The Gamble” was all the more poignant, because she got her limp when her father injured here while he was drunk. Spencer’s heroine in “Morning Glory” almost seems anti-social – she certainly had a stunted upbringing.
@MD
I don’t dislike insecure heroines or those that worry they’re a bother because they’re not fully able-bodied. I only hate it when that insecurity is played like it’s the right or heroic way to react. My problem’s with the “I must push everyone away, lest I be a burden on them” as opposed to “I cannot figure out why this guy’s into me considering what a handful I am.”
I don’t like to read about anyone, disabled or not, who decides she knows what’s best for other people better than they do. That’s something an asshole does, and I don’t like assholes. And this is what I see too often in romance. The heroine gives insecurity a pass and goes headlong into full-blown neurosis, concocting lies and other shenanigans to throw the hero off course because she just knows he doesn’t actually want to be with a disabled person.
Like one or two crazy cripple heroines could be chalked up to personality, but when having the heroine try to dishonestly manipulate heroes becomes a universal theme, I wonder if it’s a “doth protest too much,” and is actually hinting at how the author views disability.
Make sense?
I don’t think of it as a disability, but it’s definitely a chronic problem that doesn’t go away, but the hero of The Mad Earl’s Bride by Loretta Chase has debilitating migraines, and obviously Ms. Chase gets them herself or is very close to someone who gets them, because at least to this migraineur, she gets it extremely right. And while he learns how to deal with them better than he was by the end of the book, there is no magic cure.
One of my alltime favorite novellas, actually, esp. because the heroine is a frustrated but extremely intelligent can’t-be-a-doctor-because-she’s-a-woman (in Regency England), and she’s darned good for him and not just that way [g].
I really enjoyed The Nekkid Truth by Nicole Camden (in an anthology called Big Guns Out of Uniform; it had been mentioned by The Bitchery awhile ago). The heroine is a crime photographer who, due to an injury, can no longer recognize faces. There’s no magic cure at the end of the story, she just continues dealing with it.
The heroine of Marjorie Liu’s The Fire King has only one arm. But when you’re in love with a dragon/shapeshifter, you know he won’t find that a dealbreaker. *grins*
I must also offer deep and abiding love for the hero of Laura Kinsale’s Seize the Fire, who has deep-rooted and abiding PTSD and fights it every day of his life. The heroine’s love does not cure him—it helps, but it’s acknowledged that he may never be the same man.
OMG, Catherine Anderson. The heroine of My Sunshine frustrated me nine ways from Sunday. She’s brain-damaged! But a cute, adorable brain-damaged that results in her collecting tchotchkes, speaking slowly, and—this broke the book for me—having a more fulfilling life cleaning animal cages than she did as a biologist of some kind! I threw it across the room at that point.
Is it just me or do most disabled heroes or heroines have something wrong with their legs?
I personally would love to read about a heroine with albinism. I have it and so therefore would like to read about someone else who sucks at tennis and gets sunburnt in winter.
Also Nalini Singh has a novella in her psy/changeling series where the heroine was in an accident and have an injured leg.
@Megaera: I’ll have to read that. I have migraines, and although they’re infrequent, when they strike, I can’t see. I’m accustomed to being both physically well and, in generally, mistress of my own fate, and so I’ve always felt a dreadful combination of shame and rage about the migraines, which take both of those things away from me.
I’ve read The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar several times and while yes, Kerry has Chron’s disease she isn’t magically fixed at the end. Heather and Morag don’t have that kind of power – heck, Heather doesn’t even have the power to make Dinny a good violinist – they merely consult other fairy healers and the decision is left up to the reader at the end, its all pretty vague and my interpretation at least was that she wasn’t healed. The Good Fairies is a great book but not for everyone, sort of like if Vonnegut read comics after eating a hundred pixie sticks and then sat down to write Cat’s Cradle – that’s The Good Fairies.
@cbackson I would be interested to see what you have to say after you read The Mad Earl’s Bride (which, BTW, is in the anthology Three Weddings and a Kiss). Migraines vary so much from migraineur to migraineur (at least according to the books I’ve read on the subject), it would be very easy for it to be accurate, but not seem accurate to everyone.
If folks are tallying migraine books—Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia Grey series features a hero who suffers crippling migraines. I don’t get them, but my brother did growing up, and the portrayal seems accurate to me. On the other hand he (the hero, not my brother) gets them because of something to do with his gypsy blood and mystical visions, so it’s not 100% realistic 😉 The gypsy blood thing is questionable (as always) but I love the series overall…
“I have fibromyalgia, ME and almost crippling IBS, which impacts my life in every single way, and one of my coping mechanisms is reading. Having said that, I’m not sure if it would make me feel worse or better to read about a heroine who finds a romantic HEA while dealing with similar issues.”
Yeah, right? On the one hand, romance and chronic illness go together like dukes and sassy ingenues—how many of us started reading trashy books after we got sick? Or went from reading them once in a while to all the time? But then again, they’re escapist—do we want to read about other sick people, or dazzling balls and shape shifters? I can see both sides—I’m intrigued and will read some of these just to check out what’s going on out there, but on my next bad pain/brain fog day, I’ll reach for something light and fluffy…