Where to find it: It’s in the public domain in most countries, and is available as a free ebook and a free audiobook. Paper copies are fairly widely obtainable in libraries and second-hand bookshops, including online.
What is it, in summary?: Published in 1925, The Flight of the Heron is a historical novel set in Scotland during the Jacobite Rising of 1745. Its two main characters are on opposite sides of the conflict: Keith Windham is an English army officer annoyed at being sent to such a barbaric, out-of-the-way place as the Scottish Highlands, while Ewen Cameron is a young Highland chieftain and ardent Jacobite, eager to do his part for the cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie. At their first meeting, in the early days of the Rising, Ewen beats Keith in a sword fight, Keith collapses into his arms and Ewen then takes him prisoner. Keith gives his parole of honour (we're all eighteenth-century gentlemen here, after all), and as a parole prisoner he accompanies and observes Ewen in his preparations to join Prince Charles's army. Later they meet again, and history, plot and emotions all get a bit more dramatic.
What do you love about it?: To summarise—history, drama, slashy subtext, enemies to friends (to lovers?) and hurt/comfort!
In more detail—I could go on about the gorgeous descriptive prose, the wide-ranging and meticulous historical detail (Broster apparently consulted eighty reference books while writing it, and it shows), the intriguing and beautiful hints of the supernatural in a mostly-mundane story and other things the book does well, but the heart of it is in the relationship between Ewen and Keith. Keith has a bit of a tragic backstory, as a result of which he has become cynical and embittered about other people and life in general; the hospitable and honourable generosity with which Ewen, his enemy and a Highlander, treats him as his prisoner comes as a shock to him, and between this and Ewen's good looks (described at some admiring length from Keith's POV) he more or less falls in love at first sight. Ewen, for his part, isn't sure what to make of Keith at first, but later gets plenty of opportunity to appreciate the many good qualities hidden beneath his cynical exterior. Their subsequent meetings involve steadily escalating emotional stakes, more dramatic sword fights and swooning in each other's arms, a truly amazing amount of hurt/comfort, tests of divided loyalty and complicated tangles of gentlemanly honour and duty. By the end, despite everything standing between them, they have more than gone from enemies to friends.
What sort of things are you likely to request for it?: Ewen/Keith slash (hurt/comfort, conflicting loyalties, fluffy future fic…) and/or worldbuilding exploring the supernatural aspects of the story.
Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests, or that showcase particular characters and relationships?: No, it’s a single novel. However, I should mention that the author later wrote two more books featuring some of the same characters, and the three books together are sometimes (including in the canonical AO3 tag) treated as a series called 'the Jacobite trilogy'; but The Flight of the Heron stands alone as a complete story, and I intend to nominate it alone.
Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence): Major character death; fairly non-graphic depiction of the historical atrocities committed by the British Army during the '45, and mentions/threats of torture.
The Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster
Media: Book
Approx length: About 350 pages, or 127,000 words
Where to find it: It’s in the public domain in most countries, and is available as a free ebook and a free audiobook. Paper copies are fairly widely obtainable in libraries and second-hand bookshops, including online.
What is it, in summary?: Published in 1925, The Flight of the Heron is a historical novel set in Scotland during the Jacobite Rising of 1745. Its two main characters are on opposite sides of the conflict: Keith Windham is an English army officer annoyed at being sent to such a barbaric, out-of-the-way place as the Scottish Highlands, while Ewen Cameron is a young Highland chieftain and ardent Jacobite, eager to do his part for the cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie. At their first meeting, in the early days of the Rising, Ewen beats Keith in a sword fight, Keith collapses into his arms and Ewen then takes him prisoner. Keith gives his parole of honour (we're all eighteenth-century gentlemen here, after all), and as a parole prisoner he accompanies and observes Ewen in his preparations to join Prince Charles's army. Later they meet again, and history, plot and emotions all get a bit more dramatic.
What do you love about it?: To summarise—history, drama, slashy subtext, enemies to friends (to lovers?) and hurt/comfort!
In more detail—I could go on about the gorgeous descriptive prose, the wide-ranging and meticulous historical detail (Broster apparently consulted eighty reference books while writing it, and it shows), the intriguing and beautiful hints of the supernatural in a mostly-mundane story and other things the book does well, but the heart of it is in the relationship between Ewen and Keith. Keith has a bit of a tragic backstory, as a result of which he has become cynical and embittered about other people and life in general; the hospitable and honourable generosity with which Ewen, his enemy and a Highlander, treats him as his prisoner comes as a shock to him, and between this and Ewen's good looks (described at some admiring length from Keith's POV) he more or less falls in love at first sight. Ewen, for his part, isn't sure what to make of Keith at first, but later gets plenty of opportunity to appreciate the many good qualities hidden beneath his cynical exterior. Their subsequent meetings involve steadily escalating emotional stakes, more dramatic sword fights and swooning in each other's arms, a truly amazing amount of hurt/comfort, tests of divided loyalty and complicated tangles of gentlemanly honour and duty. By the end, despite everything standing between them, they have more than gone from enemies to friends.
What sort of things are you likely to request for it?: Ewen/Keith slash (hurt/comfort, conflicting loyalties, fluffy future fic…) and/or worldbuilding exploring the supernatural aspects of the story.
Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests, or that showcase particular characters and relationships?: No, it’s a single novel. However, I should mention that the author later wrote two more books featuring some of the same characters, and the three books together are sometimes (including in the canonical AO3 tag) treated as a series called 'the Jacobite trilogy'; but The Flight of the Heron stands alone as a complete story, and I intend to nominate it alone.
Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence): Major character death; fairly non-graphic depiction of the historical atrocities committed by the British Army during the '45, and mentions/threats of torture.