I was just putting some books away and saw one I've occasionally recommended to people looking for something good to read -- The Catch Trap by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It's out of print but you can usually get it on Amazon.

MZB is one of my favorite authors. She wrote my favorite book, The Mists of Avalon, which is a retelling of the Arthurian legend from the point of view of the women. I actually once traveled around Britain visiting all the sites in the book. *iz big geek*

I also love her "Darkover" series, which is a very queer-friendly series of fantasy-with-a-dash-of-sci-fi books set on a world bearing a strong resemblance to Scotland. One of my happy places.

But Catch Trap is nothing at all like that. It's a love story/family saga about two men who meet when they're teenagers, one a crushed-out kid named Tommy and the other the older, more world-weary Mario. They are trapeze artists who grow up in a traveling circus in pre-WW2 America, and they fall in love, part, and come together again as men. I love the fuck out of this book, and since it has a little bit of that "older guy with a tainted past/innocent younger guy" feel (and OMG Tommy is shorter, too!), I thought some of the folks on my flist would like it too.

This is well-written escapism, not literature, but MZB is a great storyteller and does beautiful characterizations. I think a lot of you would like it, and might never have heard of it, given it was published in 1979. If you check it out, I hope you enjoy it!