Quatrefoil: A Modern Novel

Book excerpt: A MILESTONE IN GAY FICTION Phillip Froelich is in trouble. The year is 1946, and he’s traveling to Seattle where he will face a court martial for acting insubordinate to a lazy officer in the closing days of World War II. On the way to Seattle he meets Tim Danelaw, and soon the court martial is among the least of Phillip’s concerns.... So begins Quatrefoil, a novel originally published in 1950. It marked a milestone in gay writing, with two of the first non-stereotyped gay characters to appear in American fiction. For readers of the Fifties, it was a rare chance to counteract the negative imagery that surrounded them. Today, Quatrefoil ranks as a classic work of gay writing, a novel that is still as gripping and enjoyable as ever. It is of extra interest to the modern reader for the vivid picture it draws of what life was like for gay men in our recent but little-known past.