FEATURED AUTHOR - Daniel Martin Eckhart is the author of the novels Tales of Wychwood, The Champ, Barnaby Smith, Home, The Way It Is - and the screenwriting book Write, Write, Write. Before focusing on his writing career, Eckhart served in the Swiss military, guarded the Pope's life in the Vatican, worked for the United Nations, driving trucks across the Sinai Desert, delivering diplomatic mail to Damascus and driving armored limousines in Beirut. After five years in Israel, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, Eckhart…
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2. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo - This one is a more obvious example of a protagonist with a disability as the lead character is quite literally born with a deformity that leaves his back permanently hunched. A lifetime of ringing the bell of the cathedral has also left poor Quasimodo with damaged hearing and he is half blind to boot. Some people think that Victor Hugo was a little too interested in the architecture of the buildings in the story, which can make for somewhat dry reading, but overall it is still a great book.
3. Gridlock by Ben Elton - Gridlock is one of my favorite dystopian fiction books, even if it came out way back in 1991, which was long before the genre was as saturated as it is now. It takes place in a future London, where the city is dealing with serious traffic problems. It is a very tense story, but one of my favorite characters is the one who has a disability in the form of cerebral palsy. What is great is that he doesn't let his disability slow him down and actually invents a form of green energy for cars.
4. Tell Me How The Wind Sounds by Leslie Davis Guccione - If your taste runs more towards young adult stories, then you may appreciate this one, even if it is a little old. It is a typical love story about a teenage girl who falls in love during her summer vacation, but the fact that her crush is a boy who is deaf makes things a little more interesting. I read this book a long time ago when I was still a teen, so it might not hold up as well as I remember, but it does fit your criteria.
I would have thought that losing a limb is a much greater threat and more likely in fantasy where everyone is always swinging around big axes or swords. Game of Thrones handles it well with Jamie Lanister who loses a hand and has to cope with going from one of the greatest swordsmen in the realm, to struggling and relearning everything he once mastered. I would love to read a story about say an archer who has to cope with the loss of an arm that makes it impossible for him to continue fighting or a warrior that is used to fighting with a two handed sword or sword and shield combo who has to adjust to fighting with only one arm. All too often in fantasy fiction the hero has a "disability' that somehow turns out to be a gift in disguise, which is not how these things work in reality!