Diana Nichols Rice

My First Romance

Sometimes people wonder why romance is a genre I love to read and write. I think to them it sounds frivolous and not as meaningful as literary fiction or non-fiction. I read broadly, so I do read those other kinds of books both personally and for my professional life. They are important in how I learn to understand others and myself better.

But I just keep coming back to romance.

I’m guessing that the first romances I read were probably inspirational romances. The women in my neighborhood also mostly attended the same small church and they would swap Grace Livingston Hill novels like they were gold. Some days, you would end up walking home with a brown paper bag filled with those thin, white covered books. I can still visualize the swirls on her name years later!

The first romance novel I actually chose for myself came from a series of young adult historical romances called Sunfire, published by Scholastic. The series focused on girls who were finding new pathways in America. These both pre-dated the American Girl dolls and surpassed them, in my opinion. The plot was always the same, girl has established love interest but needs to leave her home to find a new life in America or its frontier and amidst that transition found a ]man who potentially suited her new life more than her old love. The frontier changed… I read about Plymouth and Virginia settlements, the Oregon trail, and the Hudson River valley… but the questions of which man was the best were consistent. To be honest, I think the old love interest was dispatched with pretty early in the books (by Chapter 4, maybe), and much of the rest of the book was her adjusting to her new life. I loved these books!

I remember standing in front of the shelves at my local bookstore in the 1980s, trying to decide which book I would convince my mother to buy for me. I usually picked out the thickest book I could find, and one that I thought would stand up to multiple readings.

I had several favorites, and recently found the first one I ever read on a used bookstore website. I couldn’t resist the splurge to have my hands on a piece of my childhood, and the book Amanda is now mine again! Amanda is a bit of a spoiled, headstrong Bostonian, forced to head to Oregon with her gambler father when all of his debts come due at once. She had an agreement to wait for handsome Joseph but that doesn’t matter to her father. And on the trail, she meets Ben, the wagon train master’s son. Will Joseph follow her to Oregon? Will Amanda learn how to cook over an open fire? Will Ben carve her name on a rock? Will the book be casually racist and destroy all my memories of the series?

(That last one is actually making me nervous as I reread through this childhood favorite!)

What about you? Did you read Sunfire romances? Do you remember your first romance novel?

Why I Read Romance

I think I read my first romance novel when I was in elementary school. It was probably a Grace Livingston Hill novel, most likely one about a family living in a barn. I know that plot summary sounds the opposite of romantic, but at the time, it was one of the best things I had ever read. The details are a little vague, but I remember reading as many Grace Livingston Hill novels as I could and then swapping them with my cousin and my next-door neighbor.

I know I wrote my first romance in elementary school. Of course, it featured a prince and princess. I remember writing in pencil and then tracing over the words in pen to make it permanent, and then using three staples to make it an actual book. It was illustrated (not well) and my focus was more on making sure the ball gowns had miles of lace and ruffles, and less on making sure that hands had fingers. The plot was, to say the least, weak.

I always knew I was in love with romance. I read every new book until I reached the end and got to the part that gave me a “happy book sigh.” And my favorites, those were the ones I reread over and over. I found the Grace Livingston Hill barn romance, “The Enchanted Barn,” a few years ago on Librivox and listened to it on my commute. The story line didn’t hold up necessarily, but something about it combined with the reader’s broad Maine accent immediately transported me to my 1980s bedroom. I was home.

That, to me, is one of the beauties of romance, that transporting to another time and place.

I know romance has the reputation of being predictable. After all, the hero and heroine always end up together. What else could possibly happen? For some, that pattern makes it silly. Not to me. For me, there’s nothing silly about the process of moving toward one another. There’s nothing predictable about the ways our histories, our pain, and our vulnerabilities connect with another person’s.

Instead, there is something beautiful about finding a person who sees your history, understands it, and chooses to walk with you. There’s something absolutely astounding about the fact that we can know each other, what makes us tick, where we’re likely to fail, and instead of using that knowledge to our advantage, using it to support another person. Maybe romance ends with two people together, but the way they get together is unique and interesting.

That’s why I read romance.

Thanksgiving Traditions

As I’m sure it was for most of us, Thanksgiving celebrations looked different. Fewer people at the table. More care and attention to where we were and had been. But beyond the three types of cranberry sauce that my husband says are absolutely necessary for Thanksgiving, my favorite tradition made another appearance at our table.

It started four years ago when we had, as a family, a hard year. My husband was laid off from his job, I was considering a cross-country move for a new job, and every day felt hard. In the midst of that upheaval, I remembered a story from the Old Testament. In order for God’s people to escape from Egypt and move into a new land, they had to cross the Jordan River. To help them remember their deliverance and his provision of a way out of an impossible situation, God told them to gather stones from the riverbed they had just crossed to create a memorial. “In the future, when your children ask about these stones,” he said, “tell them what I did and how I brought you through on dry ground” (see Joshua 4 for the full story).

So, I sent my kids into the alley to find some stones, handed everyone a Sharpie and asked them to write what they were thankful for from the past year. Our stones became our memorial of God’s faithfulness. Every year since, new stones have made an appearance on our table. Some are scavenged throughout the year, some come from the small island where my mother grew up, some still come from the alley behind our house. But each year, we’re able to record how we have seen God show up. We’re able to remember that we are not forgotten. We remember that we have been brought through.

What made it onto the rocks this year?

Family.

Friends.

New job.

We did more than survive 2020. We found moments to thrive.

And those, more than anything else, are the things I want to remember from 2020.