Diversify Your Reading Challenge: Historical Romance

According to the Novelist Plus database a romance must : Tell a story of two people (of different, same or trans-gender) who overcome some adversity(ies) to live their version of "happily ever after" - which in this case is "historical" insofar as the novel is set in an earlier time period. All this means that the BDC Research Room is, understandably I think, a little light on the genre. The BDC is an historical collection mostly consisting of non-fiction materials about the people, places, events and themes of the area's past. However, there is one title in the BDC Research Room that fits the bill as this month's "Historical Romance" selection.  

That title is Beaufort 1849: A Novel of Antebellum South Carolina by Karen Lynn Allen (San Francisco, CA: Cabbages and Kings Press, 2011). It meets all the "romance" and "historical" requirements above. 

Jasper Wainwright, a Southerner by birth, has spent a dozen years away from his family's plantation in Beaufort, South Carolina. During his travels he has become critical of slavery. To the chagrin of most everyone in his social circle, except the lovely, talented and of marriageable age Cara Randall, he brings his opinions about enslavement with him upon his return. And therein lies the historical romance.  

Reviewers on Amazon.com have called the novel "intelligent, interesting and engaging" and "full of evocative detail and compelling characters." It is "a compelling and complex story of love found and lost." 

A West Coaster by birth and residence, author Karen Lynn Allen studied Chaucer and engineering at Stanford University and entered the corporate world before returning to her love of writing. So far, she has published three novels: Pearl City Control Theory (1999); Beaufort 1849 (2011); and Universal Time (2015). 

The BDC Research Room has a copy for permanent retention and there are copies one can borrow through SCLENDS.