Making Heroic Heroes

I read a book recently in which the hero, a wealthy man, had been blinded in an accident, and the heroine was a psychologist who’d been hired by the man’s family to help him accept his blindness. He was resigned to living a life of seclusion where he wouldn’t have to interact with anyone. There was plenty of conflict for the two characters, as he wanted nothing to do with her, and she was forced to keep working with him.

The book was a romance, so there were the usual conventions—why she refu...