A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale

This is my second Patrick Gale book and I do like his writing. The other book, A Perfectly Good Man, hasn’t stayed with me unfortunately but I did note how much I liked his subtlety of style. This one is a foray into historical fiction using his own family history as source material. It is set in Edwardian times, when Oscar Wilde was being metaphorically strung up for his sexuality, and deals with Gale’s great grandfather Harry Cane who unaccountably left his a family to go to Canada to homestead on prairie land. Gale weaves a homosexual story around this, which is not implausible when you consider Harry never married in Canada. Although this is a major part of the story, there is also the Great North American Adventure story happening, with people battling it out to tame the land and eke out a living. Harry meets up with another gay man, Paul, and his sister Petra and they build their lives together. But nothing is straightforward and evil people, gossip, World War I and the Spanish flu all play their part in unraveling their happiness. This is a sensitively written book and a pretty good read really.