Two New Books Explore Gay Sex & Romance During the World Wars

Picture it: Sicily. 1914. No, this isn't a Sophia Petrillo story from The Golden Girls, but rather an intro to what could be a very steamy and very gay wartime love story. It's that side of World Wars 1 and 2 that two new books are delving into. In Memoriam by Alice Winn is a romance novel about two young soldiers in WWI, and Luke Turner's Men At War: Loving, Lusting, Fighting, Remembering 1939-1945 is part history/part memoir that explores the men who didn't quite fit into the straight, cisgender expectations of what a soldier—or a man— was "supposed" to be in the mid-1900s.

Winn's In Memoriam—published March 7th by Penguin Random House—tells the story of a group of young men in World War I Britain. Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood are classmates in a beautiful boarding school in the English countryside, seemingly far from the reaches of the first of the "Great Wars." And as they learn about friends of theirs who died fighting the good fight, the romanticized view of war only helps to increase the actual romances that are budding in the war. Gaunt finds himself falling in love with his good friend Ellwood, which is why enlisting in the war offers the perfect excuse to run from his feelings... until Ellwood also joins... and so do the rest of their classmates. Now, surrounded by death and the need to survive, their sexualities and all of the dynamics that come with being a young man come to the forefront of the war front.

For Luke Turner's Men At War—just released April 7th—we see Turner's love and fascination with World War 2 married with his own sexuality and divergence from "the norm" come to life. From his youth, Turner was obsessed with WWII. Lying in bed beneath the model airplanes he adored, he would drift to sleep thinking about the men inside of them and if a kid like him could one day be a man like them. As he grew to become that man, he also had to reconcile those men he once imagined, the expectations of their sexuality, and how this meshes with his broadened worldview that comes with age.

But Turner didn't just want Men At War to be a 'gay' book. "I was very adamant that I didn’t just want this to be a book about sexuality," Turned said. "I wanted to include men who were heterosexual too but who sit outside expectations of a vigorous war-like masculinity."

If you're looking for two great reads about the history and depth of male relationships and romance over the last 100 years against the backdrops of the World Wards, then look no further than these two new releases. Also, not for nothing, but I think books coming out about gay men 100 years after they existed are the ultimate delayed release. #EdgeSesh.

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