The Great RITA Read: In The Beginning

It started in 1982 with four books: two historical romances and two contemporary romances.
In the 35 years since then, the Golden Medallion Awards, given out each year by the Romance Writers of America for excellence in the romance, have evolved into the RITA Awards, and last year, had winners in 13 categories, some of which were not even on the radar in 1982, including paranormal romance, romantic suspense, erotic romance, and romance with religious or spiritual elements.
But there is a direct line from the first winners to 2017 winners, which included some of the biggest names in romance, such as Carolina Dreaming by Virginia Kantra, Pages of the Mind by Jeffe Kennedy, and Her Every Wish by Courtney Milan.

The romance genre has always featured women, it’s always allowed the heroine to have her story told, and it’s always valued her independence. And, now it also features LGBTQ stories as well, providing a happy ending for all those who love.
As part of new series here on B&N Reads called “The Great RITA Read,” I’ll be exploring the history of the romance genre by reading as many RITA-winning books as possible, leading up to the announcement of the 2018 RITA Award finalists in March.
Why this series? Because I love romance and it’s time that the RITA Awards gained the prominence of the other major genre awards, such as the Edgar Awards, given out by the Mystery Writers of America, or the Nebula Awards, given out by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Ameria.

There’s little mainstream press coverage of the RITA Awards (or really, the romance genre as a whole) and when there is, it tends to be of the sneering or patronizing kind that characterized a recent article in the New York Times. Why does this happen? I’ll point out romance is the one genre largely written, published, and read by women, and the state of the world, and let you do the math.
I’d rather talk about the stories.
I had some preconceptions of what those early romances would be like. I thought perhaps the heroines would not be as three-dimensional or independent as modern-day romance protagonists; that perhaps they would seem tame compared to today’s heroines, and even that they would end up being damsels in distress. After all, even romance readers often say, “well, there were some older romances with heroines who are passive and need to be rescued.” I also thought perhaps writing styles might have changed and the older books would read as stilted or less interesting.
Um, no.

As I read the three of the first four Golden Medallion Award-winning books, Day Beyond Destiny by Anna James, Rendezvous at Gramercy by Constance Ravenlock, the two historical winners, and Winner Take All by Brooke Hastings, the contemporary winner, I had a collection of characters who would not be out of place in a current romance. (I could not obtain a copy of the fourth winner, Sun Dancers by Barbara Faith, alas.)
Among these heroines were a diplomat’s daughter turned smuggler, an abused housewife, a mother, a painter who dared fall in love with a man who valued her, and a business owner determined to save her company, despite the machinations of a corporate raider. (Yes, dear readers, millionaire heroes go back to 1982 and beyond. Millionaire/billionaire romances are not new.)
I did find one interesting element these three books had in common: they were all heroine-centered, meaning if the men had a point of view at all, it was brief, and they didn’t have a strong emotional arc.

In Rendezvous at Gramercy, where the heroine is rescued from a shipwreck off the French coast and taken in by down-on-their-luck nobility who are smuggling in food and other necessities for the local townspeople, the style is very much in the vein of Mary Stewart’s gothics, such as the classic (and still wonderful) Nine Coaches Waiting. The reader does not get to know the hero, though he does eventually put aside his cynicism due to the heroine’s noble acts.
Day Beyond Destiny was fascinating in several ways. One, the heroine is a clearly abused (married to a rapist husband) who finds love and tenderness with a Greek native while on vacation in Greece. Yes, she cheats on her husband, which I’ve been told “should not be done” in modern romance, though I’m reasonably certain it could be done and done well in a modern romance. (And feel free to comment with romances you love that have this element.)

But the most fascinating element is this book is a three-generational romance, following up with the daughter and granddaughter, and, thus, the original hero actually dies later in the story. I know! Blasphemy in a romance today. Even worse, the second heroine’s story ends in tragedy, and the granddaughter barely has a romance at all but has mainly a coming of age story.
Clearly, readers (and writers) have cemented certain “rules” since 1982 that would make Day Beyond Destiny a controversial romance today. But it’s also a terrific book and, by the end of the first story, I wanted to move to this Greek Island, or at least vacation there. The story sweeps a reader away to a new and fascinating world, which is something we still want today.
Next up in this series: a look at Nora Roberts’ first Golden Medallion/RITA Winners: This Magic Moment and The Heart’s Victory, from 1982 and 1983.
Yes, Nora Roberts has been writing that long—and writing well that long.