I have gravitated to historical romance fiction since I was a teen. Love stories resonate deeply with me as a reader, a writer, and in my spiritual life. And history itself fascinates me. Add a dash of suspense (I also love classic murder mysteries) and I am in my happy place.
Why do these two genres—romance and mystery—resonate so deeply? Maybe because they are a response to humanity’s fundamental brokenness, and therefore my own brokenness. In them we hear echoes of the Garden of Eden. The romance is concerned with union, love, wholeness, and the imago Dei. The murder mystery is concerned with life, death, and justice. These things are what we had—and lost—in Eden.
Interestingly, they are connected thematically in the person of Eve. From Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s Daughter Zion:
[Eve] comes, not from the earth, but from himself [i.e. Adam]: in the “myth” or “legend” of the rib is expressed the most intimate reference of man and woman to each other. In that mutual reference the wholeness of humanity is first realized. The necessary condition for the creation of mankind, to be fulfilled in the oneness of man and woman, becomes apparent here, just as previously Genesis 1:27 had portrayed mankind from the very beginning as masculine and feminine in its likeness to God, and had mysterious, cryptically, linked its likeness to God with the mutual reference of the sexes to each other. Admittedly the text also allows the ambivalence of this reference to be evident: woman can become a temptation for man, but simultaneously she is the mother of all life. In my opinion it is significant that her name is bestowed in Genesis 3:20 after the fall, after God’s words of judgment. In this way the undestroyed dignity and majesty of woman are expressed. She preserves the mystery of life, the power opposed to death; for death is like the power of nothingness, the antithesis of Yahweh, who is the creator of life and the God of the living. She, who offers the fruit which leads to death, whose task manifests a mysterious kinship with death, is nonetheless from now on the keeper of the seal of life and the antithesis of death. The woman, who bears the key of life, thus touches directly the mystery of being, the living God, from whom in the last analysis all life originates and who, for that reason, is called “life”, the “living one” (Ratzinger, Daughter Zion: Meditations on the Church’s Marian Belief, pp. 16-17, emphasis mine).
Eve is an icon of the themes proper to the romance and mystery genres—the one who, with Adam, images God in his wholeness, and the one through whom death came and yet also bears the key of life. Like Eve, these genres “touch directly on the mystery of being” through the art of story. Romances and mysteries poke and prod at fundamental questions, the inscrutable mysteries of God. And if Eve, “the woman,” is the one touches on the mystery of being, then the popularity of the romance genre with women comes as no surprise. We are trying to understand the Divine Mysteries as women, which necessitates grappling with being bearers of the key of life and the mutual reference of the sexes to each other. For us, these questions are inescapable.
Yet the romance genre is often a matter for controversy. As with the real life relationships they depict, love stories can easily veer the reader toward false ideals, emotional manipulation, or voyeurism. Shallowness is also a risk: we want the things we want without having to exert much effort. Love without sacrifice. Feelings without virtue. Catharsis, but no personal growth.
I’m sensitive to the genre’s pitfalls. During my prodigal daughter days, I was in an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship. The topic of love is a deeply personal one; and thanks be to God, I have experienced much healing around this area of my life. But “hot and bothered” scenes stir up my yucky stuff, even after all these years. Triggering scenes will cycle through my mind on loop playback. I’m careful about my pleasure reading, but sometimes one of these stories sideswipes me and throws me off for days.
Yet I love to read stories that are bold in the telling. I want to write stories that are bold in the telling.
The question of how to be honest about sexuality without assaulting the reader’s imagination (or my own) plagued me as a younger writer. After a few years of hemming and hawing, I reached out to my college friend and historical romance author Roseanna White and asked her opinion. Not only is she equally interested in the theology of marriage, but she is equally concerned about the effect her stories have on readers. Roseanna helped me think around my scruples—my fear of leading my readers astray was an indicator that I had their best interests at heart—and directed me toward matters of writing craft. She brought up the matter of tension: story conflict can be set up in such a way that a story’s dramatic tension is built on something other than sexual tension. Sexual tension can play its part, but it need not the only point of a story, and it needs to be subservient to other, higher story goals.
Depending on where a scene’s tension lies, it’s possible to be “edgy” while minimizing the “hot and bothered.” But this requires a skilled hand and a judicious use of descriptive language. For example, I loved Lisa Samson’s The Passion of Mary-Margaret and Susie Finkbeiner’s Paint Chips, both of which delve into prostitution/human trafficking. Yet I was able to read both stories and gain something by them despite my own past trauma. The content was hard, but the craft made it readable—for me. I can’t speak to other people’s experiences; what bothers one reader doesn’t bother another.
My exchange with Roseanna set me on a path toward exploring love in my own storytelling in a prayerful, conscientious, soul-searching manner. Guess what? So much good has come from it. So much healing; so much freedom of spirit. I’ve seen its effects on my marriage. I’ve seen its effects on my imagination—I can ponder scenes and topics that I would have shied away from ten years ago. Most importantly, I’ve received spiritual consolation; the connection between marriage and God, especially its connection to the Eucharist, is no longer theoretical, but one that lives in my heart.
From this exploration came In Pieces, my debut novel and the first of my Molly Chase series—a series that is frank about sex while careful in its depiction. As I’ve bragged to friends and editors ad nauseam, I managed to escape the first book without the requisite “first kiss”—In Pieces fulfills that genre convention in a different and (I think) entirely satisfying way. Is there sexual tension? Yes. Does it overwhelm? I hope not. Does it serve character development and the plot itself? I hope so. The reader must be the judge.
Human love serves a higher purpose: to be a sacrament. To touch directly the mystery of being. Let the romance genre follow suit.
Further Reading: Memento Mori, the Romance Genre, and the Catholic Imagination (Chrism Press blog)