This is another excellent question.
Fiction is about conflict, and that conflict is often in the context of a family relationship. It may be a stage-of-life thing, but I’m over books where the teenage protagonist has #FirstWorldProblems with their (in my opinion) reasonable parent or parents. I’m also not keen on books where the parents are made out to be some kind of ogres … who have magically produced a well-adjusted child or teenager. #YeahRight.
But there is more to family relationships than parents and children.
There is also siblings … and there are a lot of stories which feature siblings.
Susan May Warren’s Christiansen Family series features the Christiansen siblings (and their parents). Now, it has to be said that they aren’t always “healthy” family relationships, but the emphasis is on acknowledging problems and doing whatever you can to fix the relationships. That’s healthy.
Dee Henderson’s O’Malley romantic suspense series features seven adopted siblings, so that’s a different kind of family. They also disagree, but they’re all noble adults who would do anything for each other.
And, of course, there are Clarke and Marty’s family from Love Comes Softly by Janette Oke, and the Baxter family by Karen Kingsbury, as I mentioned last week.
It’s interesting that all the examples I can think of are series.
Terri Blackstock is a New York Times best-seller, with over six million copies sold worldwide. She has had over twenty-five years of success as a novelist. Terri spent the first twelve years of her life traveling in an Air Force family. She lived in nine states and attended the first four years of school in The Netherlands. Because she was a perpetual “new kid,” her imagination became her closest friend. That, she believes, was the biggest factor in her becoming a novelist. She sold her first novel at the age of twenty-five, and has had a successful career ever since.
Nate Beckett has spent his life fighting wildfires instead of the lies and rumors that drove him from his Colorado hometown. His mother begs him to come back now that his father has been released from prison, but it isn’t until he’s sidelined by an injury that he’s forced to return and face his past. But that means facing Brenna too.
Kimberley Woodhouse is the best-selling and award-winning author of more than a dozen books. She is a wife, mother, author, and musician with a quick wit and positive outlook despite difficult circumstances. A popular speaker, she’s shared at more than 2,000 venues across the country. Kimberley and her family’s story have garnered national media attention for many years including ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, The Montel Williams Show, Discovery Health channel’s Mystery ER, The Hour of Power, The Harvest Show, and over 1,000 other TV appearances and radio interviews. She lives and writes in Colorado with her husband of twenty-five years and their two amazing kids.
Jacqueline Rivers manages a Pony Express station in 1860 Utah territory after her father’s death. There are daily stresses placed on her in this unconventional role—and now a government official is asking her to sniff out counterfeiters. When Elijah Johnson passes through on the stage while on an exhausting quest to find his boss’s heir, he doesn’t want to leave the beguiling station manager. In fact, he may never leave when caught in the crossfire of the territory’s criminal activities. Jackie can’t decide if Elijah is friend or foe. Can she remain strong when secrets of the past and present are finally unearthed?