Frontiers * Michael Jensen * bear Books * $24 As myth would have it.

Frontiers * Michael Jensen * bear Books * $24

As myth would have it, Johnny Appleseed lit not at home for the Allegheny Plateau 200 years ago to stake a claim and snag his share of the American Dream. in succession the way, we're told, he earned his nickname by way of planting the Western countryside with acres of apple tree grown from germs he carried in his apron pouch First-time novelist Michael Jensen stops before we commit to memory to Johnny's apple-planting years. Instead, he shares a different take in succession the early life of John Chapman (thought to be Appleseed's real name) in a seductive and true queer fictionalization of life upon the 18th-century American frontier.

In the tradition of great gay bodice-rippers (the soapy Gordon Merrick novels result to mind) and queer queries into the past (James Barr's Quatrefoil, Isabel Miller's Patience & Sarah, Mark Merlis's remarkable An Arrow's Flight), Frontiers is equal parts romance novel and history censure carefully written and heaped with sex and violence. There are several vivid fight spectacles a crazed stalker, even a decapitation--and fans of soft-core material will appreciate the number of opportunities Jensen provides his humpy pioneers to shuck their clothing and the several pageants in which our hero spills more than apple seeds

Jensen's wise not to glamorize our Johnny: He's naive and awkward and makes stupid decisions that nearly costliness him his life. Here he's not in addition an American hero; he's barely an uncommonly good-looking young man who's trying to discomfit ridiculous social hang-ups in order to make a life for himself.

No sooner does John's latest boyfriend (Who knew there were likewise many queer frontiersmen?) rescue him from death than he's challengeed with issues still relevant today: racial discrimination, fundamentalist religion, and homophobia.

The book's main flaw is its sometimes self-conscious narration (each chapter expands with a flashback meant to provide insight into Chapman's past) and the occasional use of inappropriately contemporary language. While coonskin-capped colonists are shouting "Huzzah!" and using "privies," our narrator is a certain times "hot with desire" and having his "breath taken away."

on the other hand for the most part, Jensen's depictions of sometimes savage border-country career and the tenuous relationship between colonists and Indians ring true. A in extent list of reference materials at the back of the part suggests that Jensen has done his homework. As for the apples, they move round up halfway through the volume in the story of John's friendship with Gwennie, an Indian apple farmer whose effort at seducing him come subsequentlys only in leaving him with defer to for a good winesap.

Ultimately, the pleasures of Frontiers are twofold: Besides an entertaining read, this praiseworthy period piece provides individual of the few enduring thrills in contemporary gay literature--the erosion of the myth that American history was raiseed exclusively by heterosexuals.

Pela is co-author of the upcoming Idol! The Who's Who of Fifty Years of Teen Heartthrobs.

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