Tempting Hymn is a romance novel by American author Jennifer Hallock, part of her Sugar Sun period romance series set in the Philippines in the early 1900s, during the Philippine-American War. This novel in particular is set mostly in Bais, a town in Negros Oriental province, in the Visayas region of the central Philippines, and centres around native nurse and single mother Rosa Ramos slowly falling in love with Jonas Vanderburg, a widowed mechanic and carpenter from cold Wisconsin, even as practically the entire town—split between pious Spanish-influenced elite Catholics and pious American Protestants, specifically Presbyterians—judges them both harshly, even as they were all taught that only God has a right to judge man.
Tropes:
- Death by Despair: Grief over the loss of his family, plus disease, almost kills Jonas until Rosa nurses him back to health.
- Defiled Forever: 1900s-decade Negros is a very socially and religiously conservative place, and so Rosa's history with an American man follows her everywhere and tends to paint her as this by default. She soldiers on through it nevertheless.
- The Fundamentalist: Rather expected for this era, but the Stinnetts, the American couple who run the local hospital where Rosa works and are prominent Presbyterian missionaries, are some of the most stringently devout Christians in the town of Bais despite being surrounded by equally devout Catholics. This causes them to see Rosa as practically a reprobate sinner, damned to Hell for consorting with a man (and a white one at that!) outside of marriage.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: Cebuano is this for the Americans, and English is this for the Filipinos. Then there's Dutch too, courtesy of Jonas, who likes to call Rosa mijn roos ("my rose").
- Historical Fiction: Historical romance, specifically.
- Holier Than Thou: The Stinnetts certainly qualify for their haughty, condescending and moralising attitude; par for the course for missionaries who consider themselves God's anointed (deputy) saviours in the newly-American Philippines. Most of the elite Catholic gentry of Negros can come pretty close too, however.
- An Immigrant's Tale: Played with. Jonas moves to the Philippines, though as it's now a U.S. colonial possession this might be more of a case of internal migration rather than immigration to a new country per se. Still, he's also Dutch and still knows the Dutch language, which implies he himself is not far removed from recent Dutch immigrants to the U.S. mainland. His move to the newest and largest U.S. colony isn't so much in expectation of a better life since he comes as a missionary too, which means self-sacrifice in doing God's work without necessarily the promise or expectation of getting rich or even comfortable.
- Latin Land: Spanish colonialism ended not a decade prior, and the highly Hispanicised culture, mannerisms, and very names of Filipino natives and resident mestizos, as well as the prevalence of the Catholic religion, bear this out.
- Melting-Pot Nomenclature: Standard mix of Anglo-American (and Dutch, in Jonas' case) and Spanish/Catholic Filipino names.
- Mills and Boon Prose: It's a romance novel, so there are sex scenes between Rosa and Jonas, but naturally there's hesitation in even speaking about it, even while they're doing it, which is probably to be expected in a setting with an intense presence of very conservative (even if competing) Christian faiths.
- Official Couple: Rosa Ramos and Jonas Vanderburg, who eventually get married despite coming from different Christian sects.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Jonas lost his two young daughters Lillian and Grace (and his wife Nell) to cholera, which almost saps his will to live until he meets Rosa.
- Romance Novel
- Shown Their Work: Hallock goes out of her way to really research turn-of-the-century Philippine society newly under American rule, including the medical and social work of Presbyterian missionaries in Negros province.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: It's not family holding them back on either side, but it's initially very difficult for Rosa and Jonas to be together because the entire town of Bais, both Spanish-colonised Catholic locals and U.S.-colonial Protestant arrivals, has trained its extremely Holier Than Thou and judgemental eyes on them, and sees their coupling as some black
Moral Event Horizon of sin.
