GLORY LANDS by Vastine Bondurant

Publisher:  Dreamspinner Press; 1 edition (January 22, 2014)

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Review by Christopher Hawthorne Moss

When you read and review as many gay romances as I do you start to wonder why the initial romances never wind up with law enforcement or hoodlums beating up the gay lovers. Yes, it is possible that people can hide their love as they do in many of these books. But it is sad and deplorable as that is; it almost makes you relieved to see how two young men would handle the worst of treatment. That is the case in this novel.

Emory Joe is the preacher’s son, who meets and is opened to love by musician Glory Lands. The scenes of falling in love and lovemaking are as soft and gentle as the boys themselves. The sheriff of the town that Emory lives in has a history of brutality. That brutality is visited on both of the boys, whom he also banishes. The place is Texas and the time is the mid-1920s. This is in fact a more realistic version of what might happen to two young homosexual boys. The violence of their parting sends them off in two different directions and with two different mindsets.

The novel actually presented me with a bit of a difficulty. Because I am visually impaired, I only listen to Kindle books. This novel is told by three different people with only a quick reference to the name at the beginning of each narration. It took me quite a while to figure out that was what was happening. But I can’t fault the author for choosing to do this. The voices are dissimilar enough once you know what’s going on to keep track of it all. And the story of love and redemption, or in the case of the sheriff brutality and condemnation, tells a perfectly realistic story which could’ve gone one of two ways. You will have to read it to find out what happens.