I believe that, by and large, the majority of contemporary genre fiction does not hold up over time. This is not a criticism at all, given that authors working in a contemporary setting are working within the time frame in which they currently exist. Looking at it that way, it’s totally natural when the heroine is running around looking for a pay phone, in a book published in 1987. Likewise, genre fiction is never stagnant. It changes and shifts over time, with popular conventions and tropes falling in and out of vogue.
First Things First by Barbara Delinsky was first published in 1985 as part of the beloved, now defunct, Harlequin Temptation line. When I pick up a 27 year-old contemporary novel, I’ll be honest and say that I almost treat it like reading a historical. So it was more than a little surprising for me to discover how fresh, in a lot of ways, this story still felt. The setting is idealized, and the fashion choices by the characters are now dated, but in a lot of ways this story felt like it could have been written today.
Chelsea Ross’s mission is to help locate missing children. But what she really wants to do is go back to school, earn a doctorate degree and go into counseling. To do that, though, she needs money, which is really the only reason she accepts a job offer from Beatrice London. The woman wants her to go to Cancun, Mexico, find her missing son, and “convince” him to come home. Given that Samuel Prescott London is a capable adult man, Chelsea normally wouldn’t even consider this job. But the hefty check the formable Beatrice is offering would make it possible for her to go back to school now, not in the distant future.
Chelsea heads to Mexico with a photograph of a drawn, pale man who looks like the classic overworked corporate suit. Naturally, once she lands in Cancun it’s a series of misadventures when she finally breaks down during a rain storm in the middle of a jungle. That’s when a virile stud of a man swoops in, rescues her, and sparks fly. Imagine her shock when she realizes that the hunky stud-muffin is none other than Samuel Prescott London, looking nothing like the pale, drawn stuffed shirt in the photograph. Now all she has to do is get him home, without letting him know she’s been hired by his domineering mother, and without losing her heart to him.
Delinsky employs the classic big secret trope in this book, with Chelsea hiding the fact that she’s an “investigator” hired by Sam’s mother to bring him home. Sam thinks she’s a freelance writer working on a magazine article who tracked him down through a friend of a friend. Conflict of this nature is always a bit of a train-wreck, since the reader can see disaster looming ahead. We know that once the duped character learns the truth that it isn’t going to be pretty.
Chelsea starts out as a strong, interesting character, but she fades a bit in the final chapters due to her broken heart. Yes, women have been known to behave in such a manner when our heart gets broken, but it can be tedious to read about. Where the author makes this story fresh and lively is really with Sam. He’s classic workaholic, burning both ends, and a half-step away from a breakdown. Yes, he is running away from his problems and yes, it’s a little hard to swallow that a guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth would get along so swimmingly living in a primitive hut in the middle of nowhere Mexico. Since this is fiction, it’s interesting to watch him come to terms with his life, his choices, which he begins to reevaluate when he meets Chelsea. What makes him unique, and breaktakingly so considering the 1985 publication date, is that while he is virile with Alpha tendencies, this man is a caregiver. He nurtures Chelsea. Yes, he rescues her, and then he does something so exceedingly shocking, so groundbreaking, that it must have rocked the socks right off female readers 27 years ago. He apologizes. He says he’s sorry. And once he says he’s sorry, he won’t take no for an answer until Chelsea agrees that they should be together for the rest of their days.
It’s often said that romances are nothing more than fantasies for a female audience wanting to be brain-washed. In the case of First Things First, my response is that the fantasy here isn’t all that terrible, let alone harmful. Isn’t this what women really want? A man who supports our dreams, a man who will take care of us emotionally, physically, and ultimately a man who is willing to apologize. Sam doesn’t push; he doesn’t tower over Chelsea exerting his dominance over her. He treats her like a person and when they argue, when the big secret comes tumbling out, he is the one to pick her up when she crumples like wet tissue paper. I tend to prefer my heroines to start by saving themselves, but if all the rescuing heroes arrived on the scene like Sam? I could come around.
Wendy Crutcher, Fighting For Truth, Justice and the Right to Read What You Want.
