The Flight of the Heron
We all have a few books that form our patterns - our core literary vocabulary, if you like. This is one of mine. It's about two men on either side of a war (the Jacobite Rebellion) who over the course of merely five meetings form a friendship so intense that it throws the nominal romantic interest completely into the shade. Since it's impossible in the context of mid-20s sentimental romance for the relationship to progress any further, one dies in the other's arms, and the other wears his ring for the rest of his life.I'm fairly sure Broster knew what she was doing. She certainly doesn't take it to the sexual, but there is intimacy galore. Other, earlier books of hers (Mr. Rowl, The Wounded Name, even to some extent the religious novel she co-wrote, The Vision Splendid) have similar pre-slash - or, if you prefer, romantic friendship - elements. But this is the one that is most perfectly conceived, and when I scribble, I still find myself unconsciously imitating moments from "The Flight of the Heron."
D.K. Broster died in 1950, having lived a long life as a historian in the shadow of men, unmarried and childless, but with at least one lengthy domestic relationship with another woman - sexual or not, who can tell? Had she lived a century later, I have not the slightest doubt she would have been one of the leading lights of the slash community.
