The best gay male historical romances solidly grounded in time and place

Coleman got very famous, and very rich, from Beulah Land, a trilogy of plantation life in the pre-Civil War South that was variously viewed as a much racier Gone with the Wind or simply dismissed as an interracial soap opera. What a surprise, then, to find he wrote this beautiful coming-of-age story about a sensitive boy who is a budding writer. The novel richly depicts Mark’s life in Alabama and Georgia during the 1930s and early ’40s. We are as elated as he is when he finally finds people who understand him, most notably his teacher, who is the kind of quietly strong woman character all too often overlooked in such a milieu, and equally, the unexpected young man with whom Mark finally finds a romance both exhilarating and heartbreaking.

A confession: Though part Irish by heritage, I have long since lost patience with the romanticization of the Easter Rising, which seems to me a sort of Celtic Alamo – an unholy mess that has been retroactively lionized.  And author O’Neill has been widely compared to James Joyce, which should inspire trepidation in anyone (like me) who just doesn’t get the acclaim for Ulysses. Fortunately, At Swim, Two Boys is far more reminiscent of the Joyce of The Dubliners, with writing that is highly accessible while uncompromisingly lyrical. And the heady heart of the tale, in which childhood buddies Jim and Doyler find that their affections have evolved into something much more heated, is riveting, as is the juxtaposition of their rising sexual tensions with the about-to-boil-over tensions of 1916 Dublin.

From the moment this novel was published, a year after Forster’s death (no coincidence, that), the Literary Powers That Be decreed that Maurice was, at best, a decidedly minor work from the celebrated writer of Howards End. Don’t believe it, or the homophobia that colors that judgment. The evocation of pre-Great War England is every bit as compelling as in the author’s more famous books. Here it serves to depict the stifling nature of life for those who could not conform to the prevailing mores. The most compelling moment comes when the novel’s key relationship is belatedly introduced through the slightest, most offhand observation by the title character – an ineffably smooth move by the author that simultaneously indicts the class system and belies the lush romance that will soon blossom. 

Perhaps the most powerful story surrounding The Bitterweed Path concerns the creation of the novel itself. This tale of cross-class, same-sex love set in late 19th century rural Mississippi – a place and time so well evoked you can feel the heat – was originally published in 1950(!). They say historical novels reflect the time in which they’re written at least as much as the time in which they’re set, and there’s a distinct obliqueness to the writing here. That does not detract from the astonishing eroticism of main character Darrell’s first glance at Roger, the boy he will fall in love with (and vice versa). Nor does it diminish the radical shift, in more than one sense of the term, when Roger’s father also emerges as a mutual love interest for Darrell.

When Wingmen was published in 1979, there had been nothing else quite like it: a war novel, very well researched, with plenty of action and adventure… plus a romance between two men at its center. Those feelings emerge, in a classic slow burn, between young Ensign Fred Trusteau and the more seasoned Lieutenant Commander Fred Hartigan against the backdrop of the Pacific Theatre of World War II. The often-harrowing life of naval aviators is vividly conveyed in action scenes set in places whose names will be familiar to students of WW2 – Wake Island, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Truk. Case has certainly done his homework on the hardware and the military lingo, but what lifts the narrative is the uncertain, unconventional romance between the main characters. What Top Gun could have been.