Lance Ringel

Flower of Iowa is a rather good M/M Romance novel and the 4 star rating is based upon its place within that genre rather than being a more general evaluation of the book.
As a Gay Romance novel, the book is uncommonly long and filled with many more characters than would normally be encountered in a romance novel.
It is set in the Allied trenches in the middle of WW I in France. Thus, it takes place in an era and within a culture that would be very unaccepting of relationships between people of the same gender and this sense of homosexuality being wrong is a motivation for the main characters to proceed with caution as their relationship develops. The book’s primary character, Tommy has never really faced his sexual orientation due in part to his age and also in part to his upbringing. He was raised in rural Iowa where exposure to homosexuality would have been scarce if occurring at all. Certainly in such a climate, it would have been condemned.
It takes nearly 40% of the novel before Tommy and his partner Davey, experience any kind of physical relationship with each other.
These things are what contribute to the reason this is such a good book. The book focuses on the relationship and its slow, steady development rather than on the sexual conduct of the lovers.
Once they have established their love for each other, the relationship continues to affirm love over sex and the two become more and more committed to each other and to their love.
In some ways, however, the strength of the book also becomes its weakness.
As a strength, it is refreshing to see the story as a love relationship rather than as a sexual one. Tommy is the same innocent, naive farm-boy he had been before the consummation of their relationship. As I read the book, I admired this, but only for a while. Then, that very thing began to be the book’s weakness.
Tommy, and most of the characters actually, is static and unchanging throughout the book. He has entered into a “forbidden” love relationship and not been tortured by conscience, remorse, regret or reprehension for what he has done, although he does have flashes of wondering if he has done the right thing.
But this static, unchanging character is really a flaw in the author’s development of both Tommy and the rest of the characters in the book.
Because the story takes place amidst a brutal war, the characters endure hardships and horrors most of us don’t even want to imagine, much less live through. They wallow in mud and filth, are crawled over by rats, ridden with lice, freezing, wet, exhausted and unchanged by any of that. Moreover, they continue to be innocent, naive and pure even when they kill, have blood spattered on the, ,see bodies torn apart, literally watch as friends are turned into mush and have even killed in close-up, brutal, hand-to hand combat.
Showing changes in a character over tie and through the character’s experiences cannot be easy for an author. In fact, I am sure it is quite challenging. But in a novel dealing with crossing a cultural taboo while surrounded with carnage and inhuman behaviors, showing changes in the characters is vital.
“War is a life sentence,” someone once wrote because you are changed by it, usually scarred by it, and will never be the same again.
I wish this otherwise good novel had dealt with that issue a lot better.… (altro)

Flower of Iowa is a rather good M/M Romance novel and the 4 star rating is based upon its place within that genre rather than being a more general evaluation of the book.
As a Gay Romance novel, the book is uncommonly long and filled with many more characters than would normally be encountered in a romance novel.
It is set in the Allied trenches in the middle of WW I in France. Thus, it takes place in an era and within a culture that would be very unaccepting of relationships between people of the same gender and this sense of homosexuality being wrong is a motivation for the main characters to proceed with caution as their relationship develops. The book’s primary character, Tommy has never really faced his sexual orientation due in part to his age and also in part to his upbringing. He was raised in rural Iowa where exposure to homosexuality would have been scarce if occurring at all. Certainly in such a climate, it would have been condemned.
It takes nearly 40% of the novel before Tommy and his partner Davey, experience any kind of physical relationship with each other.
These things are what contribute to the reason this is such a good book. The book focuses on the relationship and its slow, steady development rather than on the sexual conduct of the lovers.
Once they have established their love for each other, the relationship continues to affirm love over sex and the two become more and more committed to each other and to their love.
In some ways, however, the strength of the book also becomes its weakness.
As a strength, it is refreshing to see the story as a love relationship rather than as a sexual one. Tommy is the same innocent, naive farm-boy he had been before the consummation of their relationship. As I read the book, I admired this, but only for a while. Then, that very thing began to be the book’s weakness.
Tommy, and most of the characters actually, is static and unchanging throughout the book. He has entered into a “forbidden” love relationship and not been tortured by conscience, remorse, regret or reprehension for what he has done, although he does have flashes of wondering if he has done the right thing.
But this static, unchanging character is really a flaw in the author’s development of both Tommy and the rest of the characters in the book.
Because the story takes place amidst a brutal war, the characters endure hardships and horrors most of us don’t even want to imagine, much less live through. They wallow in mud and filth, are crawled over by rats, ridden with lice, freezing, wet, exhausted and unchanged by any of that. Moreover, they continue to be innocent, naive and pure even when they kill, have blood spattered on the, ,see bodies torn apart, literally watch as friends are turned into mush and have even killed in close-up, brutal, hand-to hand combat.
Showing changes in a character over tie and through the character’s experiences cannot be easy for an author. In fact, I am sure it is quite challenging. But in a novel dealing with crossing a cultural taboo while surrounded with carnage and inhuman behaviors, showing changes in the characters is vital.
“War is a life sentence,” someone once wrote because you are changed by it, usually scarred by it, and will never be the same again.
I wish this otherwise good novel had dealt with that issue a lot better.… (altro)