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Frontiers by Michael Jensen
May. 27th, 2010 12:12 am
Sometime ago a friend told me he loved Western Romance, and I thought, how many chance he will have to read them? If I think really hard, I probably come out with two, three titles. At the time I didn’t know about Frontiers; I found about it in the top 10 list Brent Hartinger compiled for my LiveJournal, and I immediately added it to my wish list; I was not sure about it, not knowing about it before, I had a little doubt that maybe the novel was too “heavy”, I like historical, but sincerely, I don’t like when they are too heavy on details, making the read more a challenge than a pleasure. But Michael Jensen is also the partner of Brent Hartinger, and so this romance outside the romance was a point more the pro list to buy it. The book is a good historical, and above all a good Western romance; if we are true with us, Western romance is the “light” subgenre of the Historical romance, and so the risk to be “boring” is less, and Frontiers is not boring at all. It’s a mix of drama and romance, the drama part makes the novel realistic; it’s not an easy life for the people living on the Frontier at the end of the XVIII century, and both side, white men and Native Americans. All the story is centred around John Chapman, apparently a lucky man, but Lady Fortune does strange tricks; John seems to be always on the run, first from his family, then from expectations he is not willing to meet, and now even from the law: he was seen with his lover, and English Officer, and so he is double a traitor, to the Law of God as sodomite, and to the Law of his country, sleeping with an Englishman.
John runs away once more time, and he ends up literally lost in a snowstorm and right on the doorstep of Daniel, a strange hunter, who first seems to don’t like so much strangers, and John in particular, and then teaches him how to survive. But Daniel’s love borders in obsession, and John has to find his own way, and another run is there for him. This time he ends up in Franklin, a settler town in the middle of nowhere, but even here John finds a possible partner, Palmer, a 17 years old boy (don’t worry, John is only 24) who, on the contrary of his townsfolk, is able to appreciate and respect the nature around him.
Colin, the English Officer, Daniel, the rough hunter, and Palmer, the young settler, represent different type of love and lover. In order of appearance, develops also John’s involvement; don’t get me wrong, in a way or the other, John loves them all, but only with Palmer he will realize what true love is. The novel was also acclaimed like a good erotica: indeed, it has more sexy scenes than other mainstream novels, but don’t worry, the sex is never gratuitous, and it always serves the story, not the way around.
Another point that let me perplexed reading the blurb, and that in the end was better than expected, is Gwennie’s character, the Native American woman who will help John settle down with his new life; I’m sincere, I was a little worried that John had to “settle down” also in the other meaning of the words, and that Gwennie was his “historical” beard. Maybe she will be, and maybe the author sometime hinted at that, but she is not part of the emotional development of John: one thing he is sure and doesn’t change, is his strong belief that he prefers men to women, and he has to deal with it, on the good and the bad.
The author neither saves to the reader the dark side of that part of History, and I think he is by the Native Americans side, and also by that of Nature. Almost all the worst episodes, if not all, are by the hand of the white men, and I don’t doubt that they are not fantasies, but unfortunately only retelling of what really happened.
Amazon: Frontiers
Reading List:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bott
Cover Art by Chuck Smith
1) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Dorian’s beauty is both a blessing and a curse, but it was the artist who intrigued me the most. Basil adores Dorian and pleads with Lord Wotton not to ruin him. I was in high school when I read The Picture of Dorian Gray and Basil’s sort of hopeless crush was very familiar to me, as was its ultimate result in misery -- though none of my crushes ever ended in death! 
6) The World According to Garp by John Irving. I read this book when I was far younger than I should have been -- about ten -- but I was glad I read it. It became important to me at the time because of Roberta Muldoon, a transsexual ex-football player, and Jenny Fields, Garp’s assexual mother. In TWAtG, the combat zone is the mine-strewn landscape that lies between the heterosexual characters. Jenny and Roberta were not only characters that mirrored parts of me that I saw nowhere else in fiction or non-fiction at the time, but they were my first validation of any kind that sexual variants outside the male-female sex/gender dyad existed at all. I had suspected it, knowing that I existed, but I was also unsure as to whether or not I was the only one who did. 
Tatterdemalion by Anah Crow & Dianne Fox 
1) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Dorian’s beauty is both a blessing and a curse, but it was the artist who intrigued me the most. Basil adores Dorian and pleads with Lord Wotton not to ruin him. I was in high school when I read The Picture of Dorian Gray and Basil’s sort of hopeless crush was very familiar to me, as was its ultimate result in misery -- though none of my crushes ever ended in death! 
6) The World According to Garp by John Irving. I read this book when I was far younger than I should have been -- about ten -- but I was glad I read it. It became important to me at the time because of Roberta Muldoon, a transsexual ex-football player, and Jenny Fields, Garp’s assexual mother. In TWAtG, the combat zone is the mine-strewn landscape that lies between the heterosexual characters. Jenny and Roberta were not only characters that mirrored parts of me that I saw nowhere else in fiction or non-fiction at the time, but they were my first validation of any kind that sexual variants outside the male-female sex/gender dyad existed at all. I had suspected it, knowing that I existed, but I was also unsure as to whether or not I was the only one who did. 
Tatterdemalion by Anah Crow & Dianne Fox