Book Review: Dancing on Coals by Ellen O’Connell

Title: Dancing on Coals
Author: Ellen O'Connell
Published: October 18, 2011
Genre(s): Romance: Historical
Page Count: 320
Rating:

Summary from Goodreads:

After escaping robbers intent on murder, Katherine Grant says, "I jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Before long I'll be dancing on the coals." The highwaymen were the frying pan; the handsome young Apache who saved her from them was the fire; and the coals? Gaetan.

Rage against the enemies of his people has consumed Gaetan from boyhood. The only use he ever found for any white was to test the sharpness of his knife. Forced by his brother to endure Katherine's company, Gaetan tries to deny what he sees—the white woman has a man's temper and a lion's courage. She has an Apache heart.

In spite of hate, distrust and fear, surviving in the rugged country of southern Arizona and northern Mexico forges a strange bond between Katherine and Gaetan. When the bond turns to love, can they admit it? Can they bear the consequences?

For the most part, the time for Native American romances has come and gone. That’s probably a good thing. No matter how “respectful” a white author tries to be, romances of this sort are nevertheless still mired in problematic tropes such as the Noble Savage, Indian religion and way of life are usually mysticized and exoticized to the point of ridiculousness, and white heroines are usually kidnapped by the same Noble Savage Indian they will later have a romance with. I acknowledge the long-steeped tradition of racism in the genre, but even if you accept from the get-go that Dancing on Coals hinges on a flawed, Anglo-centric worldview…it’s still not a good book. A master writer, Ellen O’Connell is not.

The novel opens with Katherine Grant on a stagecoach. She is a fiesty, independent woman—the reader knows this because she’s traveling alone, cross-country, in a very dangerous and volatile territory. She grew up sailing around the world with her father and brothers, and is headstrong and unladylike. Cue eye-rolling from my end. It’s the height of misogyny to think that a “strong” heroine has to possess “manly” attributes. Typically feminine women can be strong, too. Katherine is also barren. Why is this important to the narrative? Because, obviously Katherine is “only half a woman”! Because obviously giving birth to potato-looking fetuses is the True Test of womanhood. I have no time to dignify such shabby gender-essentialism with a rebuttal, so let’s move on.

Naturally, the stagecoach is beset by thieves, and Katherine gets away from them only to run into a band of Apache raiders, who then take her captive. Then the Apache are attacked by Mexican soldiers. Then Katherine “escapes” but has to live as an Apache prisoner for a while. Then the Apache are attacked again and the band gets split up. Eventually Katherine goes north to the Apache reservation, blah blah blah. Dancing on Coals suffers from a surplus of Strong and Independent Katherine proving herself via daring escapes, usually narrowly avoiding a nasty rape. She gets shot multiple times, but always lives. She’s So Speshul.

Again: if you need to prove that your heroine is a “strong” woman by almost raping her time after time…you’re probably A) not a very good writer and B) somewhat misogynistic. Stop doing that.

Oh, and yeah: Dancing on Coals is a romance, so I guess it’s relevant to discuss the love interest, Gaetan. (By the way, O’Connell admits that “Gaetan” is not an authentic Apache name and was just something she picked because she liked the sound of. Yikes.) Gaetan…Gaetan is boring af, to be honest. For one thing, he doesn’t even talk until the second third of the book! And even when he talks, it’s just to order Katherine around. The two don’t have a decent, grown-up conversation until about halfway, and by then the reader is supposed to buy that they’re in love, because O’Connell quickly whisks them into a marriage soon after.

Look, the point of a romance is for two individuals to meet, learn about each other, and make a life together. How are these goals supposed to be accomplished when the hero and heroine aren’t even on speaking terms for up to the first half of the book?

As a character on his own merit, Gaetan is pretty standard fare for a Native American romance. He hates white people, but due to being forcibly sent to a reservation school, doesn’t exactly mesh well with his own people. He’s a lone wolf, and his only goal is to bring down as many Americans and Mexicans as he can before dying himself. That’s it, that’s Gaetan. There’s no nuance to his character, no unique aspects. Again, it’s boring.

So, Katherine and Gaetan go through all of this turmoil and drama and fighting, and eventually manage to wrangle a (fairly unbelievable) happy ending out of this mess. There’s an epilogue, which is disastrously tone-deaf and weirdly presented, and then The End.

Ellen O’Connell just isn’t a good writer. And this affects everything that goes into Dancing on Coals. The characterization is shallow and obvious, the plot is unevenly paced, the prose is overly verbose and doesn’t flow well at all. What this book needs is a good editing, and maybe just shouldn’t have been written, considering that the premise itself is almost irredeemably problematic.

I can be down with a well-written Native American romance (sort of), but a badly written one has nothing to offer, in my opinion. Sorry.