2017 NB: The title of this entry was changed from “Handicapped Heroines” to “Disabled Heroines” due to the fact that “handicapped” was and is an ableist term. I want to apologize for the poor choice, and apologize that I cannot change the URL to match the headline. Thank you to Brooke W. for bringing this to my attention on Twitter. – SW
It’s a little different than the “Help a Bitch Out” feature, but it’s all about looking for good things to read. Good Shit vs. Shit to Avoid is a recommendation thread devoted to books in a specific genre that feature a type of heroine, hero, plot, or locale that is often difficult to find, particularly when that feature is done right. Today, Heather, the awesome, from The Galaxy Express, is looking for disabled heroines:
When you have a chance, I’m hoping you can assist me with information about a particular type of romance heroine. I’m thinking my question might be eligible for your HaBO feature. A friend of mine and I were discussing how we’d like to read romances involving a handicapped heroine—one where the heroine gets the hero without any serious cop-outs.
By cop-outs, we mean:
1) The heroine’s handicap is resolved/healed in some way prior to her HEA.
2) The handicap becomes a non-issue based on milieu (e.g., deafness in an environment where every non-deaf human has to wear earplugs to keep the local inhabitants from piercing human ear drums with their loud calls).
3) The couple is united by a magical, psychic, biological, etc. bond they have no control over. This bond tends to ensure the hero can’t have a satisfying relationship with the vast majority of otherwise eligible women.
4) The handicap turns out to be a side-effect of great magical or psychic power that enables the heroine to save the world or the country.
SF/F would be nice, but we’re basically looking for stories regardless of sub-genre.
Oh, Heather, I hear you on the cop-outs. Love my conquer all, but there are some physical ailments it can’t overrule. What romances featuring disabled heroines do you recommend?
@JaneO I thought of Dancing with Clara too, but if I remember rightly (and I might not because it is a LONG time since I read that book and I don’t have a copy of it), it fails on Cop Out #1. Doesn’t Clara get over her disability, at least to some degree, because of the hero’s help?
@Diatryma, I know which Julia Quinn you mean and I can’t think of the name of it either, but I also think that fails on Cop Out #1 because the heroine finds she can do all sorts of things that she previously assumed she couldn’t.
Jo Beverly’s Hazard. The heroine has some sort of club foot or foot deformity and has trouble walking. It is never healed but the hero never has any problem with it. Though someone above said that just a limp is a copout, so YMMV. I love this book though – I just reread it a few weeks ago!
Tanya Huff’s Blood books have Vicki Nelson, who left the Toronto police because she has a degenerative retina thing going on and is slowly going blind. Since one of her partners is a vampire, night-blindness is thematically interesting. In the first book, I don’t think it matters, but in the third, she loses her glasses and has to navigate hostile territory without. In the fourth book, there’s a potential copout (rot13d): fur vf ghearq vagb n inzcver gb fnir ure yvsr, juvpu svkrf gur jubyr ivfvba guvat nf jryy nf bgure zbegny pbapreaf.
(rot13.com or Leetkey will decode for you.)
Fool for Love by Eloisa James has a heroine with a handicap that stays a handicap. It’s got a lame heroine (apparently a limp is the handicap of choice). I really enjoyed it, especially since there was no magical fix (I also hate magical fixes).
Annie’s Song by Catherine Anderson had one of the best disabled heroines I’ve ever read. She’s deaf.
Also Phantom Waltz by the same author has a heroine who is paraplegic and in a wheelchair. I thought that romance was handled very well also.
Homespun Bride by Jillian Hart has a blind heroine. I actually really enjoyed the book, particularly because she DOESN’T get cured of her blindness in the end, and I thought both characters were mature and likable through most of the book. Other readers thought it was boring and predictable, but since I was expecting huge, dramatic blow-ups and a lot of juvenile sniping, I was surprised.
My thoughts on the book in case anyone is interested.
*praying for no HTML failure*
Lynn Kurland’s historical This Is All I Ask features a permanently blind hero and an emotionally scarred heroine who thinks herself ugly and unworthy. Parts of it are so very poignant that it’s one of my all time favorites.
I can’t remember which book this is, but the heroine was thrown from a horse and seriously injured as a young woman and now has a limp from the hip injury. She doesn’t think she’s able to have children. She is an heiress who is content not to be married since she believes she can’t have children. A guy kidnaps her to force her to marry him for her money. She gets away and escapes after the carriage wrecks in the rain to a cottage. A English lord, a marquee or earl I think, is also escaping the rain from an attempt to rescue his step sister. The young lady and man don’t know each other’s in the cottage until the next morning when they are caught in a compromising situation by her father, brothers, and some local gossips. They are forced to marry. He didn’t want to remarry due to his horrible first wife. Anyway, they marry, move to the country. There’s a serial killer she’s telepathically linked to and sees the murders taking place in a local dungeon. Turns out to be his cousin. She wasn’t thrown from her horse years before, but from the cliffs after she wittinesses the murder of her husbands brother? More books follow up on the cousins. Serial killer back. I’m thinking regency England.
I have a book on my keeper shelf called (if I remember correctly) A Man Like Mac – can’t recall the author right this moment – where the hero was a college track coach who became a paraplegic after being shot while trying to break up a domestic dispute between two strangers. The heroine was at one time his student, then an olympic-class marathon runner who is both physically injured (after being hit by a car while running) and emotionally scarred (from a troubled childhood). The story is engaging. The hero is amazing. The heroine…you want to slap around a little through much of the early part of the book, but she eventually becomes less slap-worthy. Their HEA does resolve some of her emotional issues, but both of their physcial challenges remain. It’s a pretty enjoyable read.
I haven’t yet read beyond Cordelia’s Honor, but I know Lois McMaster Bujold’s character Miles Vorkosigan is pretty disabled. The book is SF, and I don’t know how much of his disability is changed through technology, but it might be worth checking out. I think the compendium Young Miles is the first to pick up after Cordelia’s Honor, and I don’t think you need to read the first to enjoy the rest of the series.
I think his “official” book is still forthcoming, but isn’t John Matthew from the Black Dagger Brotherhood also hearing impaired? Wrath is supposed to be nearly blind, but he kicks too much ass despite that fact for me to really count it.
I’ve also got to second This is All I Ask and Candle in the Window.
get78: I hope you get at least 78 good recommendations!
@Melissandre In the BDB books John Matthew is Mute you must not forget that Zadist is horribly scarred and tattoed with slave symbols and his brother is missing a leg.
In the latest book Love Avenged the king goes totally blind and has to start using a seeing eye dog.
BTW, dont care what anyone says I still love that series. :0)
Precious Bane is a novel by Mary Webb, first published in 1924.
Prue Sarn has a harelip, which is seen as a mark of sin and possibly witchcraft. So not only is she disfigured, but her neighbors fear and distrust her. She is also saddled with a selfish, arrogant brother, Gideon, and a father.
Only one person can see how kind, generous and beautiful Prue is.
I LOVE THIS BOOK. Love it. Back in 1989 the BBC made a movie version with Janet McTeer as Prue.
I second the Catherine Anderson early works – Annie’s Song was amazing. The new books are extremely religious. WAY too religious for me.
A book that features a disabled heroine and a temporarily disabled hero that I have absolutely loved and adored for over 20 years is Only Love by Susan Sallis. It’s a young adult novel. There is no easy fix for either of their disabilities. The heroine stays in her wheelchair. The hero is temporarily disabled due to a motorcycle accident and has to cope from going from a highly active teenager to in a wheelchair. There are quirky disabled and non-disabled people at the home they’re all at (ie – there’s a guy who constantly loses his teeth just so the heroine can find them and spend time with him).
It’s realistic and touching. There is no HEA. Instead, the ending is bittersweet. I found that that made it a better book because the author didn’t come up with a magic cure for the heroine’s disability and disease. She dealt with the ramifications accurately, realistically and poignantly.
I cannot go on about this book enough. It’s an amazing read.
Just an FYI – one of Anne Perry’s mystery novels featuring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt has an ancillary couple that always intrigued me. The story is set during the Victorian era and the ancillary female character has some sort of gyne condition which leaves her in pain all the time and unable to have sex therefore quashing any marriage opportunities for her. The ancillary male character was beaten and raped and left paralyzed below the waist, also quashing his hopes for marriage. They are introduced for some reason – can’t recall why, exactly – and although the story does not follow where this pairing might lead, it leaves you with a poignant hope for them to find happiness in their restrictive society.
CANDLE IN THE WINDOW by Christina Dodd. Heroine is blind.
TO PLEASURE A PRINCE by Sabrina Jeffries. Heroine is dyslexic.
A PRINCE FOR JENNY by Peggy Webb, a Loveswept from 1993 features a Downs Syndrome heroine. Nicely handled and recommended.
I just wanted to say how much I appreciate this topic.
I also wanted to ask if anyone can recommend any romances where the disability isn’t as obvious? There are a lot of suggestions for limps, deafness, blindness, and loss of limbs. I have several “unseen” disabilities, as do most of my friends. The only book I’ve recently that included my disease (or other “unseen” disabilities) ended with the heroine being magically healed by fairies! Do you know of any books like this or has anyone considered writing this type of heroine? I can speak for myself, my friends, and a lot of women in my support groups that would be thrilled. I would love to see this in a book as it would be wonderful to see the disease and social stigma, as well as the emotional tole, used as conflict instead of the usual contrived type that is typical in many books I’ve read recently.
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Mary Balogh’s Red Rose has a heroine dealing with pain and a limp after a riding accident.
@Leslie H. I think Jenny is the daughter of one of Webbs earlier heroines. A Rose for Jenny??????? It was an Intimate Moments books that is on my keep shelf also. WOW, didn’t realize Jenny’s book might be out there, I remember in the epilouge of the first one thinking that Jenny’s story would be wonderful.
Great topic.
Ditto on Mouth To Mouth by Erin McCarthy – one of the sexiest sweetest books ever and Catherine Anderson’s books.
Halfway To Heaven by Susan Wiggs
Heroine has a ‘wasted’ foot and has to wear specialty boots, walks with a limp, etc. No cop-out, special powers.
Historical and not SF/F at all, but nice.
James F David wrote several brilliant books among which was BEFORE THE CRADLE FALLS. It’s part scifi, part murder mystery chock full of time travel weirdness topped off with a touch of romance. The heroine is a brilliant scientist who lost both her legs in an accident and who remained handicapped all the way through to the HEA and beyond. The hero is a scrummy and wonderfully tragic police detective whose scars may be inside, but run just as deep. Oh, and it takes place in one of my favourite cities (and my hometown): Portland, Oregon.
Note: While James F David is a Christian and a professor at George Fox College, this novel is non-relgious, as are all but one of his novels.
These might be a bit difficult to find but they’re all good reads:
The first is Mary Balogh’s “Silent Melody” – its a sequel to an earlier book, “Heartless.” The heroine, Lady Emily, is the sister to the first book’s heroine and she starts out as both deaf and dumb in the first book. Over the course of the books she painstakingly learns sign language so that she can communicate. What I liked was that she wasn’t bothered by being different; she was very confident in herself and what she could do, especially by the end of the book.
Another lovely one is Susan Mallery’s “A Little Bit Pregnant.” The heroine is in a wheelchair, which doesn’t slow her down a bit. Mallery includes alot of the details of how she organizes her world and her space in order to be independent. I liked how Mallery wrote the book so that, even with showing the compromises the character made to her disability, it really wasn’t about that; instead her personality drives the story.
Iris Rainer Dart’s book, “When I Fall in Love”, deals with a hero, rather than a heroine who’s disabled. Lily, the heroine, starts out with a really wonderful life which goes off the rails when her son, Bryan is shot and becomes a paraplegic. Her new boss, Charlie, has cerebral palsy, and she tries to get him to spend time with Bryan to show him that life still goes on even if he has to live a little differently. As things go on, she begins to see Charlie in a new light as well.
The book Lyn is thinking of is Scandal Becomes Her by Shirlee Busbee. Heroine had a limp.
Lynn Kurland also has a short story, To Kiss in the Shadows in the anthology Tapestry. Lianna (heroine) has been severely scarred by smallpox.
Based on all the heroines-with-limps listed above, it seems like a limp is the popular way to make a character disabled while not affecting their conventional attractiveness.
Meg. Thank you. Scandal Becomes Her is correct.
Meg wrote> Lynn Kurland also has a short story, To Kiss in the Shadows in the anthology Tapestry Lianna (heroine) has been severely scarred by smallpox.
To Kiss in the Shadows is a good short story and comes after and related to This is All I Ask. Another good book with heroine dealing with some PTSD from past abuse, the hero is blind in this book.
An older medieval historical romance, Winterbourne by Susan Caroll, has a heroine with a club foot which causes her to limp. The disability is part of the story, she doesn’t get a magical cure either.
I thought of a few more. Night into Day by Sandra Canfield about a woman with rheumatoid arthritis. A Soldier’s Heart (SIM 602) by Kathleen Korbel about a nurse with PTSD. Lucy Monroe’s Blackmailed into Marriage about a woman with vaginismus.
I imagine in the past limps would’ve been a big deal for women since grace and beauty were considered some of their most prized attributes. So maybe not a complete cop-out.
Kristina, you’re right about John Matthew; it’s been too long, and I’m forgetful about the details. Lover Avenged is in my pile to read, so I guess I’ll soon learn about Wrath and his ass-kicking deficit (though I’m sure the usual perks of being a vampire help make his blindness a little more bearable).
There was a HaBO book a year or so ago that had a dyslexic hero. He was a sea captain or something, and the heroine was the postmistress of Bath. I read the darn thing after that, but I can’t remember the title or the author. That was another good one, and certainly a more “hidden” disability. It also went outside of the limp/blind/scarred trifecta.
Oh, now I can’t remember either author or title (my bad—and most of my books are packed away because we’re trying to give that “uncluttered” impression while our house is on the market), but the heroine was going blind at the beginning of the book, and there was NO miraculous cure, and she’d lost most of her vision by the end. I enjoyed the book and feel terrible that I’m slighting the author by not being able to remember which of the myriad books I’ve read over the past few years should be credited.
The hero in JQ’s The Lost Duke of Wyndham was also dyslexic.
If you consider mental health issues due to past abuse or trauma a hidden disability, that’s a good chunk of the market. Heroine in most need of therapy that pops up in my head is from Anne Stuarts’ A Rose at Midnight, girl was seriously tormented. And Eve Dallas, of course, dealing with her tragic childhood. Sometimes there’s an actual breakdown, like the heroine in NR’s Sanctuary (who was being gaslighted, but still).
~~lurking and writing titles down frantically~~
Thanks for this thread!!! I, too, hate cop-outs—makes for a more interesting story when the characters have to deal with and accept the disability of one or both characters.
time01: time to buy yet another bookshelf for my books!! (hope the bf is cool with another IKEA Billy clogging up the condo!!!)
“Just an aside: Shouldn’t it be ‘disabled heroines’ or ‘heroines with a disability’ (although obviously both the British and the American usage destroy the handsome alliteration…)? “
I hate this crap. It all means the same thing. I go by cripple, personally. Fewer syllables and letters and gets right to the point. I use a walker or scooter depending on my mood, can’t write with a pen or pencil and can’t speak very clearly. I’ve got the cripple merit badge and wear it proudly. It gets me good seats at hockey games.
I have not read many novels with disabled heroines. It’s sort of like reading books set in Boston – they’re too close to my own existence so I end up furiously taking issue with how they handle it. For instance, Sally Mandel’s Out Of The Blue was a big hit for people, and I was red in the face screaming at the heroine for being a big fucking whiner. Anna’s a 29 year old diagnosed with MS 5 years prior who was an excellent athlete before her diagnosis required her to use canes and wheelchairs. Replace MS with HSP, and that’s exactly how you can describe me. When she started pushing the hero away because she didn’t want to be a burden, I had a fit. Why do disabled characters in books always do this? Do the able-bodied see us as a burden? Should I feel guilty about accepting my husband’s help and love? This trope is incredibly hurtful to me and I really don’t understand it. Being disabled isn’t really all that bad. I’m just as worthy of love and sex as anyone else.
I’ve also read Again the Magic and hated it, for the same reasons, but scarring is not a disability, please. Girl should’ve built a bridge and got over it.
Marin Thomas’s Samantha’s Cowboy had a woman with cognitive and emotional issues after a head trauma in her teenage years. No quick fix at the end. Good handle on how she was practical about moving forward and her reasonable qualms about being responsible for children.
That’s it for me. I haven’t really cared for how authors have treated disability so far, so I kind of avoid those stories. I will try Catherin Anderson, though, before I quit entirely.
Lisa Kleypas – Again the Magic – heroine has horrible burn scars on her legs, but still mobile.
Elizabeth Hoyt – To Beguile A Beast – the hero is horribly scarred on his face and missing an eye if I remember correctly
Laura Kinsale – Prince of Midnight – hero has inner ear problem causing problems with his equilibrium / balance
Laura Kinsale – Flowers From The Storm – hero has a stroke or something that compeletly ruins his ability to speak and is put in an insane asylum, gets speech back but nothing like previous abilities were
Okay, I guess I mostly knw about disabled heros, so I will stop the list there…great topic, though…many new reads to check out from this list.
I forgot Steve’s Story by Jess Dee
Very brave of the author to write an unusual HEA.
Meg from What a Scoundrel Wants, by Carrie Lofty. Meets all non-cop out requirements, easily. And to boot? It’s a fabulous book.
I have nothing to add, because while I’ve read quite a few romances with disabled heroes, I’ve never read one with a disabled heroine. I wonder if that’s just coincidence, or if disabled heroines are written less often than disabled heroes.
Very good topic! I was thinking about this recently, and I love all the examples here!
Lois McMaster Bujold has done it thrice, although they’re all male. The Curse of Chalion’s hero, Caz, has a damaged hand due to his time as a POW. He doesn’t consider himself disabled, but his handwriting is terrible and it hurts to grip a pen, and at one point he tries to hang off something and his hand starts cramping up, causing him to fall. No magical fix.
The Sharing Knife’s hero, Dag, has an amputated hand long before the story begins. He has a wooden cap on the end of his wrist into which he screws a hook, a spork, a bow, etc. It’s a masterful portrayal of a disabled person just getting on with their life without diminishing the effect that the disability has on their activities. Dag doesn’t mind his missing hand, his family doesn’t mind, and the heroine quickly gets over it, but throughout the story he is acutely aware of how strangers judge him and treat him differently. There are some magical ramifications of his missing hand, but there is no magical cure. He stays an amputee from start to finish.
Miles Vorkosigan (probably start with The Warrior’s Apprentice) was poisoned in the womb; as a result he is a hunchbacked, manic-depressive dwarf with brittle bones and all kinds of medical complications. Future medical technology eventually replaces his bones with plastic, but he immediately turns around and develops a seizure disorder to make up for it. It does not feel like a copout at all.
I felt like I knew more examples of this trope, but upon perusal of my shelves most examples are of the “magical disability” variety, where an amputee receives cyborg limbs or the disability is a side effect of the superspecialawesome powers used to save the world. And it is rather disturbing to see that most examples are male: probably so that the heroine can be nurturing and maternal to the brooding, wounded soldier. *eyeroll*
There’s a longish short story by John Varley called, I believe, Blue Champagne. At least it’s in the collection of stories under that title. It’s SF, there is a romantic plotline, and it includes a heroine with full-body paralysis. I have to hedge about whether her condition violates the 4th item in your list: she certainly doesn’t save the world in any way, but she does acquire a very unique compensation for her disability that makes her famous. Several other characters in his stories have what might be called disabilities, although in the worlds he creates they are really just “other” attributes. At any rate I would always recommend anything by John Varley to anyone anytime.
P.s. I think her character shows up once more in another short story, but I don’t remember if it’s in the same collection.
Oh, thought of another heroine: Donna Kauffman’s Let Me In – heroine is ex-spy who’s body was seriously damaged in her last mission gone awry. She’s recovered fairly well, but I thought it was well done how the heroine’s body was not the same after recovery from such physical trauma, and she had to work with that in her daily life. So often, especially with the Alpha male warrior types, yeah, they get injured and then they are back to normal in no time – but the body isn’t always that resilient.
Also thought of a couple of hero examples: Cindy Gerard has a black ops hero who takes a permanent physical hit in Show No Mercy; Brockmann’s Frisco’s Kid has a SEAL who’s trying to figure out what’s next after he’s been injured too much.
In Bujold’s The Sharing Knife series, the heroine is handicapped in the hero’s community by not having the magical powers that are typical for adults there, and the hero is physically handicapped (missing his left hand.)
Their limited abilities, and how they compensate and learn to deal with the other’s weaknesses is quite central to the story, and handled in a respectful way.