Frontiers.

Frontiers * Michael Jensen * Pocket Books * $24

As legend would have it, Johnny Appleseed lit out for the Allegheny Plateau 200 years ago to stake a claim and snag his share of the American Dream. On the way, we're told, he earned his nickname by planting the Western countryside with acres of apple trees grown from seeds he carried in his apron pocket. First-time novelist Michael Jensen stops before we get to Johnny's apple-planting years. Instead, he shares a different take on the early life of John Chapman (thought to be Appleseed's real name) in a seductive and very queer fictionalization of life on the 18th-century American frontier.

In the tradition of great gay bodice-rippers (the soapy Gordon Merrick novels come to mind) and queer queries into the past (James Barr's Quatrefoil, Isabel Miller's Patience & Sarah, Mark Merlis's remarkable An Arrow's Flight), Frontiers is equal parts romance novel and history lesson, carefully written and heaped with sex and violence. There are several vivid fight scenes, a crazed stalker, even a decapitation--and fans of soft-core stuff will appreciate the number of opportunities Jensen provides his humpy pioneers to shuck their clothing and the several scenes in which our hero spills more than apple seeds.

Jensen's wise not to glamorize our Johnny: He's naive and clumsy and makes stupid decisions that nearly cost him his life. Here he's not yet an American hero; he's merely an uncommonly good-looking young man who's trying to overcome ridiculous social hang-ups in order to make a life for himself.

No sooner does John's latest boyfriend (Who knew there were so many queer frontiersmen?) rescue him from death than he's confronted with issues still relevant today: racial discrimination, fundamentalist religion, and homophobia.

The book's main flaw is its sometimes self-conscious narration (each chapter opens with a flashback meant to provide insight into Chapman's past) and the occasional use of inappropriately contemporary language. While coonskin-capped colonists are shouting "Huzzah!" and using "privies," our narrator is some times "hot with desire" and having his "breath taken away."

But for the most part, Jensen's depictions of sometimes savage border-country conduct and the tenuous relationship between settlers and Indians ring true. A long list of reference materials at the back of the book suggests that Jensen has done his homework. As for the apples, they turn up halfway through the book in the story of John's friendship with Gwennie, an Indian apple farmer whose effort at seducing him succeeds only in leaving him with respect for a good winesap.

Ultimately, the pleasures of Frontiers are twofold: Besides an entertaining read, this praiseworthy period piece provides one of the few enduring thrills in contemporary gay literature--the erosion of the myth that American history was founded exclusively by heterosexuals.

Pela is co-author of the upcoming Idol! The Who's Who of Fifty Years of Teen Heartthrobs.