The aim of this chapter is to analyze Nora Roberts’s Boonsboro economic empire, which comprises the businesses she owns in the town of Boonsboro, Maryland, and her Inn Boonsboro romances (2012), a trilogy which fictionalizes those same businesses. In particular, the goal is to study the ways in which Roberts’s trilogy contributes to the entwinement of romantic love with capitalism by probing into several aspects of the novels: the theme of courtship; the contradictory relationship between romance and capitalism; the romanticization of commodities and the commodification of romance; the use of metaphors that present love as both organic and contractual, and the characterization of the romantic hero as either a businessman or a warrior. Ultimately, the analysis will show the intricate ways in which Roberts’s commercial enterprises benefit from the affect provided by her romances. It will also reveal the ability of the romance genre to shed light on the many paradoxes of capitalist societies.
