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A Shiny Tin Star by Jon Wilson
Apr. 19th, 2013 11:55 pm
There are not many novels set at the beginning of the XX century and dealing with homosexuality, but the few I read gave a chance of happiness to the heroes that at first I wasn’t thinking possible. But indeed, hidden in the layers of history, there are many of these stories, of “roommates” who never married, of old bachelors who shared an house, of men who married but still had a special relationship with their best friend. They are the gay men of the past, sometime emerging from vintage photo-shoot, posing in their best Sunday attire and conveying from those pictures all the love they felt for each other.But it was not simple for them, it was not easy above all to accept they were different. For how strange it sounds, I think that, for who was living in the “Wild” West, it was easier, women were scarce, and I don’t think many questioned if two men were living together. But our heroes move their story to the big cities of the east, Atlanta and Philadelphia, and with the big city comes the feeling they are different, and comes the guiltiness, the hoping and believing there could be a cure for those strange feelings.
This is not a cowboy meets cowboy and they walk together towards the horizon, they have to earn that right, more than an heterosexual couple. And while Federal Marshal Forest O’Rourke can be more refined than County Sheriff Eugene Grey, he also the one who seems to give up to them, not accepting his feelings, believing they are an illness. Not that Gene is more comfortable, even him has the feeling to be dirty, but in a way he is more resigned, less bent upon denying them.
There is sex between Forest and Gene, but it’s not graphic details and mostly to give the feeling to the reader that their love is complete, in any sense, physical and emotional. It’s also romantic in a way, and the ending, while not easy is, as I said, full of hope for a chance at happiness.
http://www.cheyennepublishing.com/books/s
Amazon: A Shiny Tin Star
Amazon Kindle: A Shiny Tin Star
Paperback: 250 pages
Publisher: Cheyenne Publishing (November 23, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1937692175
ISBN-13: 978-1937692179
Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bott
A collection of three novellas, all of them dealing with the theme of friends with benefits, or better from friends to lovers, as the title suggests.
This is one of the most beautiful romance I have read. Robert is a young nobleman tortured by his father who fear his son and heir being homosexual. But Robert doesn't know nothing about sex and nothing about love. But one night he meet Greyson, a duke who is searching an angel... from that moment his angel is him, and from that moment his name is Angel. In fact, we only know him like Angel, his real name is revealed only at the end when Angel is ready to break free of his cage and declare his love.
This day I really didn’t need to cry more, but it was time for me to read this Christmas novella by Jardonn Smith and so I did, and of course I cried. The Good Shepherd is a bittersweet novella, it’s a Christmas novella only since the two heroes met during the Christmas season of 1944, but they did so in a prisoner camp in German territory under Nazi occupation; during that 1944 they were lucky and with the help of a German shepherd they managed to escape and go back to United States to start a life together. Good you will say, that is a story with an angst beginning but with an happily ever after. Wrong. The author didn’t deceive the reader, he starts the story in 1951 and Harold, Jack’s lover, dies in Korea; from this event, Jack walks through the memory lane and tells us the story of their brief but deep love. Jack had only 6 years with Harold, but those six years will last all his life, a life that will be 10 times longer, 60 years.
First of all, I was surprise to find out this was an historical romance, I don’t know but I was of the wrong impression it was more sci-fi/fantasy. In a way, there is a steampunk flavour on it, it’s not that the author pushed much on fantasy details, but I think she took some “liberties” to make the story more a romance than a historical novel. For example, John Fauth is a University professor and a scientist, and his machine to find noble metals seems a little too much futuristic to be true, but I’m not so familiar with the various scientific discoveries and their time to be able to tell how much far from reality the author went. Another of such liberties is maybe the forced profession of Robert Belton, a male prostitute in a brothel in Seattle; while it’s true molly houses and similar places were already existing at the time, a saloon/slash brother in a frontier town like Seattle in 1898 I think was not a common place to find a male prostitute. Again the author made it believable, specifying Robert is a “necessary” evil thing, according to the owner of the brothel; but I wonder who would have been the courage at the time to enter such a place and openly ask for a man instead of a woman (since women were available); from Robert’s words, even if they were not the majority, and the women gained more money than him, he still had customers.
At the fourth book in the series there is always the risk that the story becomes “ordinary”; actually for some readers this can be even a good point, many readers like to be familiar with the heroes, like to know a lot about their life and love. I think Lee Rowan did a trick with this novel to satisfy both types of reader. 
At the end of the nineteen century, two lovers have to face the worst of separation, death. They are both men, but this is not the story of how difficult it was for them to be together, when the story starts they are a couple and they would be happy if not that Philip is deathly ill, consumption, and day after day he is fading away. Jonathan, who is also the wealthier of the two, decides to bring Philip in a big mansion just outside New Orleans, not in the hope to see him better, but to alleviate his last months; in the isolated place, with only the servants as witnesses, Jonathan and Philip are building memories that will serve to Jonathan to survive losing his lover. 
