Romantic Reads

Told in spare, simple prose, this slim novella explores how two good cowboy buddies discover not just that they're more than friends but that they're meant to spend the rest of their lives together—despite the unwritten social code of the West that forbids homosexual love. As they meet once every year or so, for so-called fishing trips in the mountains, they grow closer (due to their feelings) and more distant (due to their increasingly divergent lifestyles). For the reader, however, each of these reunions brings to life the kind of intense, pure, private love we all fantasize about—as well as the understanding of what happens to people when their deepest, most intense feelings must be kept hidden from others.