A review by snazel
Promised Land by Connie Willis, Cynthia Felice

3.0

Okay, maybe I won't give up on reading JUST yet. This one was fun. An installation in both the Accidentally-Betrothed-Now-We-Have-To-Live-Together-Because-Of-Someone's-Will genre (always a classic) and the Frontier-Romance genre (with distressing racist and colonialist themes mostly removed by setting it on an alien planet). The main character has an unerring knack for making the wrong assumptions on first meeting, which I deeply identify with. The gossipy conversations over the radio were clearly written by someone who's lived in an incredibly small town with nothing going on but what your neighbour is up to and the weather. And most everyone is good people.

The one exception that kept me from loving the book is the main character's mother. We find out that

Spoiler

she has been doing nothing on the farm, because of illness. For years. We already know she's been legally trapped on the farm with no way off but an indenturement to a cargo liner, but for the rest of the book her (late) mother's situation is only referred to in terms of how badly she treated Sonny and the boys. And she treated them badly, don't get me wrong. But all of Delanna's joys that she finds in the farm are pretty contingent on being able-bodied. To have been trapped on a farm, sick, with a dead husband, cannot have been fun. But while the MC's general journey has been to understand a person's situation more and more, gain more empathy, and feel kinder towards them, her mother's situation is never returned to, and she never feels more kindly towards her. In fact, as more is revealed, dear departed mum develops less and less redeeming qualities. She's just there, the person who does no work, takes all the money for D's school, and is emotionally abusive.

Which is not the nuanced depiction of disability I would like to find. That's the one blemish on an otherwise fun and frothy book.