You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO comes from Sarah and she’s looking for an American historical romance:
The second is an American historical mass paperback that I read in the early to mid nineties. I think it had a yellow or gold cover. It was set in California or Oregon in the late 19th or early 20th century.
The heroine’s father owns an orchard or vineyard. Hero is somehow affiliated with union or labor organizers – he might be a professor studying labor organization – at any rate, he is in conflict with heroine’s father because of the poor working conditions of the orchard/farm laborers. He wears glasses and has collar length hair. Heroine is kept very separate from workers and is monitored/controlled by a governess/keeper who restricts her into very prim and proper behavior.
In the early part of the book, she even sleeps like a lady and wakes up in the morning in the same position she fell asleep in, with hair contained neatly in a braid.
There was a (to my high school mind) a very hot skinnydipping/oral sex scene in a pond. The morning after the heroine’s sexual awakening, she wakes sprawled across the bed with hair loose and chocolate cake hidden under the bed and her governess/caretaker is appalled. As she interacts with hero, she becomes more aware of the farm laborers and confronts her father.
Man, I wish I could sleep like a lady.
The Awakening
by Jude Deveraux
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Jude Devereaux, The Awakening. I learned more about labor history from this book than I did in high school.
When I was in high school, we were having scholastic bowl practice and my best friend impressed the coach with her knowledge of the Temperance Movement. She told him she learned all about it from the Gamble by LaVyrle Spencer.
That’s it! Wow, you all are fast! And yes, I learned a lot about the Temperance movement from Gamble too.
I completely forgot about the horrible controlling fiancé
Everything I know about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory is from a Sunfire book.
Oh my gosh, that’s where I first read about it, too. It was Rachel. I think I read it at least five or six times.
Me too! I loved those Sunfire books so much. One of my favorites was about the Johnstown flood … it was Jenny I think.
I think it was Sandra Brown who said she first thought about writing romances when she had to take her car in for service and, while she was waiting, picked up a well-worn copy of a Kathleen Woodiwiss paperback left in the waiting room and learned more about the Norman Conquest in the first 50 pages than she’d ever learned in school.
I have a friend who impressed the hell out of a high school teacher when she was the only person in the class who could explain what a proxy was. Where had she learned it? Harold Robbins’s THE CARPETBAGGERS!
It’s Jude Deveraux, The Awakening. The heroine’s father grew hops.
https://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Montgomery-Taggert-Family-Book-ebook/dp/B000FC0ZNU/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1534294021&sr=1-1&keywords=jude+deveraux+the+awakening
started rereading today and I realized how foundational this particular book was for me. I started reading nonfiction CA history and women’s journals in high school, majored in History in college, and got into a major beef with my advisor because the “tone” of my history papers was too informal – I was more interested in story thanmore academic argument or debate. And come to think of it, this may also explain my fascination with the smart, jerky, rebel-with-a-hard-on for the heroine AND Social justice. Also, Tim Minchin.
I love history and think I learned a lot more of it from Sunfire books than any other place including school.
My favorite Sunfire books were Susannah and Caroline. I hate the “girl dresses up as a boy” trope, but I loved it in Caroline. I don’t know why.
I am TELLING YOU, I learned so much (SO MUCH!) from romance novels and that knowledge pops up in the weirdest places, including but not limited to: Jeopardy! and assorted trivia nights at bars, spelling bees, and most memorably in a lecture hall during med school. I have found romance novels to be better researched than any other fiction genre and frankly on part with non-fiction books sometimes.
@DiscoDollyDeb: The Norman Conquest book was The Wolf and the Dove by Woodiwiss, and it is my favorite of hers. I love that book so much and I personally think it holds up pretty well (the hero is not rapey, it’s a different dude who is).
And I learned everything I know about black-footed ferrets from reading romance review websites …. (!!!)
Also, twenty-five years ago, I was the only person in my insurance law class who knew when and where Lloyds had formed before the prof assigned the reading. I actually took in a romance that had a great explanation of how the Society of Lloyd’s was formed and worked in its early days (far beyond the classic “heroine’s father’s ship is missing, they’re bankrupt, she must be married off” trope) and showed the professor. He had a good chuckle, but no criticism of the writer’s description.
My fascination with the American Civil War began because I read SUSANNAH, and later COREY. I learned about Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion from SABRINA. I learned about the Lowell textile mills from JOANNA…you get the idea. My love of historical romance began with the Sunfire books and blossomed from there. In fact, I could probably write an essay called “Things I Learned from Reading Romance Novels–And I’m Not Talking About Sex.”