No, no reason to hurry.

March 21, 2019 8:35 AM

Welcome to Noraville The small Maryland town rebuilt by Nora Roberts
posted by box (11 comments total)

I remember being thirteen years old and finding The Reef in the back of my mother's bookshelf. It was fun, it was sexy, and I read so many Nora Roberts books as a teen and in undergrad. They were impossibly cheap at the used bookstore, quick to read, and light uncomplicated stories -- a perfect study break, and an eff you to my parents, who wanted me to read "more challenging" books. I just wanted my happy ending.

I still have them all on my bookshelf, their battered covers well-loved and nearly broken, although to be honest, the stories were all kind of samey, and more a little heteronormative (with the problematic issues that also implies). I never really warmed to her In Death series for some of those reasons. I'm glad that the article mentions the total lack of diversity, both in her novels and in Boonsboro.

But! I've followed along with her works into revitalizing her hometown on her blog for quite a while now. Despite all of this, I still loathed now the Inn Boonsboro series was basically a marketing piece for Boonsboro. I think that was about when I stopped automatically buying new Nora Roberts paperbacks out of habit.

Anyway, it's clear she loves her town with all her heart, although I wonder what will happen to this town once she finally stops writing, probably ultimately when she eventually passes away.
posted by PearlRose at 8:57 AM on March 21, 2019 [8 favorites]

That is a very weird article in that it starts out as kind of a travelogue about visiting a tourist trap town and then becomes a bit of an expose of the town's political foibles that appear to result from amassing all that whiteness in one spot. It is worth reading to the end, even if you think you aren't that interested in all the quaint businesses Nora Roberts owns and operates and detailed descriptions of the jewelry they sell.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:05 AM on March 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

Oh hai Boonsboro! I live about 12 miles south in the far southern tip of Washington County. It's a cute little town that has done slightly better than some of the other quaint small towns in the immediate vicinity in terms of both establishing a downtown where you might stop and spend a few hours, and in maintaining local services like grocery stores, gas stations, and banks. If you didn't know the Nora Roberts connection, it's not all that obvious.

However, for me the most interesting thing about Boonsboro is not that it's home to Nora Roberts, but that it's home to Maryland's longest-running gay bar/drag club, with a history that dates back to the 1930s.
posted by drlith at 9:41 AM on March 21, 2019 [19 favorites]

I read this yesterday and was surprised to find no reference to Pleasant Rowland's re-making of Aurora, NY.

Town and Country (of all places), has a rather good overview of how often rich (white) folks like to play liege lord.
posted by minervous at 10:00 AM on March 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

I grew up near Boonsboro, and still live nearby.

The article's description of Boonsboro as the epitome of small-town, whitebread, frozen-in-time Main Street USA is 100% accurate. Chili fundraisers at the fire hall, pancake breakfasts at the church, 4th of July at the park. There are a couple of decent antique stores, and a locally owned collectible shop where rosy-cheeked youths can buy baseball cards. American flags everywhere. Not a McMansion in sight (although it sounds like that's changing). There are a lot of these sleepy, backward, racially homogenous little Anytowns in western and central Maryland.

On the one hand, it's kind of a charming place to walk around – at least for me as a white guy. On the other hand – it's utterly unsurprising to hear that the place has been seized by Trumpism.

Interestingly, all of the kids from Boonsboro that I grew up with are now very-left-leaning activist types. (And they moved the hell out of Boonsboro as soon as that was an option.)
posted by escape from the potato planet at 10:11 AM on March 21, 2019 [7 favorites]

(And, yes – The Lodge, formerly Deer Park Lodge, is a local institution. Interestingly, it's about half a mile down the road from an extremely Trumpy biker bar, which I hope doesn't lead to trouble. I didn't know that it had been around that long!)
posted by escape from the potato planet at 10:17 AM on March 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

western MD is also the last bastion of the state for confederate flag lovers, proudly hanging it on their houses and their pick-up trucks (not a stereotype) to remind Washingtonians trying to get to Wisp Ski Resort / Deep Creek Lake that even this deeply progressive state have its racist masses.
posted by numaner at 10:30 AM on March 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

You might want to stay away from St Mary's County, numaner... :-(
posted by Nice Guy Mike at 11:19 AM on March 21, 2019

Roberts publishes 5 new books every year? That can't be easy, even if they are – I'll take PearlRose’s word for it – pretty much all the same. I hiked through Boonsboro years ago, heading south on the Appalachian Trail; it's the home of the first ever Washington Monument (1827).
posted by LeLiLo at 11:38 AM on March 21, 2019

The degree to which Nora Roberts’s books are all the same depends on your love of romance novels, in my opinion. There’s absolutely a consistent NR style and certain themes recur in her work, but one of the reasons I love her standalone and trilogy romances is that they let me try on so many different careers. Roberts heroines work and love what they do.

They *are* very heteronormative and very white; I’ve liked seeing Roberts include more characters of color and non-hetero characters and couples in her “In Death” series, and I wish she’d bring that inclusion to all her writing.
posted by epj at 2:23 PM on March 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

and Nora Roberts reads the comments and responds.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 4:24 PM on March 21, 2019 [3 favorites]