Can I confess you something? When I was young I saw and re-saw the television fiction inspired by the journal of Laura Ingalls Wilder, about a family leaving in a farm near a little town. The period was the end of the nineteen century and every day I saw a tale of good feeling and love.

All right, reading A Summer Place by Ariel Tachna I have had the feeling to see another episode in the fiction. She has a way to decipte the little community that reminds me the characters I have loved. The town sheriff, the widow, the bank's clerk, the owner of the store department... Only the town doctor is not of the crew to complete the cast!

Philip is the 27 years old blacksmith of the town. He is homosexual. Not that he has claimed it loudly, but his last lover has dumped him in front of all the city to being murder some day after in a way only a homosexual could be. And now the town sheriff, and old friend of Philip, thinks he could be the next victim and ask Nicolas, an outlander who comes every summer to the island to overseeing the building of huge cottage for rich people, to hire Philip and takes him far away from the town.

Nicolas agrees, even if he has some doubts: also him is homosexual, and has always hidden his sexual preferences during his summer work in the island. But being this near to the handsome blacksmith could be a problem, moreover when other victims are found and the two, Nicolas and Philip, are forced to live in the same house.

I don't know about the strictly correctness of the setting, I only know that the feeling that has left me this novel is of a "thought" novel: it's not only a way to let us read of two men making sex. Really it could be a contemporary novel as a historical one, but I have liked the little glimpse Ariel Tachna has given us to this little community.

Both Nicolas and Philip are strong characters, maybe Nicolas a little to dominant than Philip, but I think it's a right characteritation: a blackmith and a builder cannot be two magnolies... 

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/currenttitles/summerplace/summerplacebuynow.htm

Amazon Kindle: A Summer Place

Amazon: A Summer Place