I am avid reader, but not always bound by GA's collection of talented writers

Today, I am going to review an oldie that I fished out of my bookmarks from years ago. It's a short story that can be read in one day if you feel like it, despite being split into 20 chapters. I never met this author during his time, but I do appreciate a nice reading.

http://iomfats.org/storyshelf/hosted/sunshine/

To start off, how much is love worth to you? I don't know about you guys, but $1500.00 sounds cheap in comparison to the lifetime of joy that a good partner could bring. Of course anyone promising this for a monetary value is usually either deluded or a con-artist. The character of "Dan" in this story did not believe so, he truly hoped and wished for something so desperately that he'd walk a thousand miles to find his partner/soulmate, literally.

Western Canadian geography is an alien concept to me as I have only ventured around Eastern Canada and the lower Great Lakes, but I do appreciate the author's remarks on Canadian landscape and experiences that add a bit of colorful detail to this story.

Of course, you assume this being a Gay story, it's about a boy finding another boy and folling in love with him. I would argue that assumption is quite false; the story is split between two segments, one about our hero Dan traveling across the Canadian wilderness with his companion Sam in this remarkably simple plot device, which finds them falling love with one another very quickly. The other story surrounds Dan's straight friend Beau, who falls in love with a girl named tonya, who perceptive quality makes her equal to Margaret Cho among gay literary heterosexual female characters. The dueling love stories draws a nice contrast and parallel for readers, who are looking for a common nature to love rather than a standard story of "I'm a gay guy who falls in love for a guy, so this entire story must exist in a vacuum about me", which I love reading and writing as well, but let's face it, our friends are dating and forming relationships too.

The nature survival portion of the story was excellent and I could see this being a nice low-budget movie if it is ever picked up by an enterprising indie school filmmaker.

A decent outing, but there are some negatives: One, I felt Dan's internalized fear of his nascent homosexuality/bisexuality was too strong. Since this was written 10 years ago, I think times have changed in how we talk about sexuality and as such, we're no longer so tight about "if you like boys, you're gay" mantra at least I hope people have evolved past that. Second, anti-gay counseling that is mentioned towards the end of the story has declined over time to a point, where it's mention is not relevant, especially as society in both US and Canada have been moving past that. It's not to say there are no proponents of aversion therapy or other psychological therapies against homosexual tendencies, but I don't think that part of the story will be understood over the next few decades. Lastly, I want to smack Sunshine boy for not giving readers a conclusion to these two boys struggles. There should be a short story telling us how far their love takes them, do they find happiness despite family issues, do their friends find joy in their relationships, and so much more.

The story is good, but it is not holding up as well to time as many other writers, which is a shame.

I grant this story:

7.5 out 10