A Thousand Words for Stranger, Julie E. Czernada
Another
lost-psychic-falls-in-love-with-the-older-tough-guy-who-reluctantly-rescues
her novel. The
Liaden books are much better at the psychic-Cinderella
cliché.
Cherryh is worlds better at the
growing-up-tough-in-the-spaceport genre in general. Czernada is not actively
awful, but she uses a lot of capital letters instead of worldbuilding, and a
great deal of the dialogue could be read by William Shatner, and the
psychic-preying-mantis improvement-of-the-species sexual thing, and... so I
didn't finish.
I may have missed great improvement, but I recommend you try this from the
library, not even a used bookstore.
So wrote clew in
SF&F.