Proving Herself by Yvonne Jocks

I learned a new term in this book - "remittance man". I'm guessing this was more of a Victorian term, referring to a younger son or other troublemake who is sent away from Britain (mostly to Australia, according to the internet, but also to the US) and who is paid an allowance (or remittance) to stay away, basically. I don't remember hearing that term in any Regency historicals, and it didn't seem to be typical for younger sons to be sent away during that period. A development in the later nineteenth century, I guess? There's even a Jimmy Buffett song, "Remittance Man" - the things you learn on the internet!

Proving Herself by Yvonne Jocks
(2001, Western) 3/26/08
Grade: 4

When second son Collier Pembroke is exiled to Wyoming, he’s desperate to find some way to regain his family’s regard, even if it means investing in a homestead run by unconventional Laurel Garrison. Laurel is determined to prove her claim, but the only way she can spend the winter on the ranch is to marry Collier - but it’s just a marriage of convenience, right?

An interesting story with an unconventional hero. Collier might be right at home in Edwardian England, with his upper crust attitudes toward work and etiquette, but in Wyoming as a “remittance man”, he’s uncomfortable and frustrated. But he’s willing to take a chance and try new things, (although he expects to bring his feather bed along). I appreciated that the author was willing to make Collier a bit unlikeable from time to time, and she didn’t turn it into the usual “cowboy good, aristocrat bad” cliche that’s usual in Westerns. Laurel is a more typical romance tomboy heroine, but her dislike of society (and “girl shoes”) is explored in more depth, she’s not just “fiesty”. The main problem I had with the book is that the secondary characters are given a lot of time (setting them up for books of their own, I guess), and I would rather have used those pages to explore the hero and heroine in more depth, particularly Collier. The ending, in particular, was too abrupt. This is a fairly minor criticism, but it could have been just a little more satisfying.

When I was at the Celebrate Romance conference a few weeks ago, we had a discussion about "unconventional heroes". Most of the people there seemed to define unconventional heroes as men who turned into weird animals or sucked blood in unusual ways, but that's not what I'm looking for in an "unconventional hero". As much as I like romance, I've never been a huge fan of the typical "romance hero", particularly the alpha variety. Give me a hero who's not the usual alpha, and I'm swooning already. Looking back at some of the books I've enjoyed recently, many of them featured heroes who weren't afraid to be different, and weren't afraid to be... nice. Horrors! Alas, I'm afraid I'm out of the mainstream on this one - I think most romance readers still have the fantasy of being swept away by the commanding alpha hero. But that's just not my fantasy guy.