Believe it or not, Mark Probst's charming debut novel about a couple of gay cowboys who fall in love on a cross country cattle drive has a lot more in common with your dad's favorite Western novel than Brokeback Mountain.

And that's a good thing.

The world of the young shop clerk Ethan Keller and ranch hand Travis Cain is a vivid Technicolor creation that harkens back to the Western films of Hollywood's Golden Age. I've never been a fan of Westerns - in literature or films - but was pleasantly surprised at how quickly Probst's breezy style and likeable characters drew me in. The writing itself is sturdy, masculine and free of flourishes, making it perfectly suited to the genre. And while he tends to paint in broad strokes, the settings he describes - the general store, the boisterous saloon, a spinster schoolmarm's genteel parlor, the Rocky Mountain vistas - are all so iconic, it's impossible not to picture them perfectly in your mind.

The downright wholesome love story between the two main characters develops slowly with just enough tension to keep the reader turning pages in sweet anticipation of the inevitable. A refreshing change in this day and age when it seems most modern romances involve the couple falling into bed first, and love later. Both protagonists are well developed and complicated, particularly the adorable Ethan, an upright, bookish young man who struggles to understand his desire for Travis at a time when homosexuality was never spoken of. But it's with some of the secondary characters that Probst really shines. Miss Peet, the lonely school teacher who shares her love of books with Ethan and hopes to share her life with Travis, and Willie, Ethan's ne'er-do-well older brother, both take surprising, uncharacteristic, turns late in the story that prove them to be multi-dimensional real-to-life human beings.

The book is broken into three major sections - the first dealing with Ethan's life at home and the second chronicling the treacherous 900 mile cattle drive. I must admit I got the most pleasure from these. In part three, the story takes on a darker tone and the author injects a bit of Twenty First Century proselytizing that the book might've been better served without. Nonetheless let me just say, without giving away the ending, overall the story left me pleased and satisfied. And definitely eager for more from this budding talent.

Rating first novels is a different assignment than rating novels by authors whose output allows comparison with a gamut of works: usually a five star rating denotes a major work of genius. But to encounter a work as simply beautiful as Mark R. Probst's THE FILLY makes such a positive impression (and a suggestion that this may be the opening work in a significant career) that it requires a heads-up to the audience. And so a five star rating for this book, for this reader, is justified. This is a work of courage on the part of subject matter, but it is also an example of clarity in writing and in technique that deserves applause.

Probst takes us back in time to 1878 and to the age of the Westerns so rhapsodized by the films of the 40s and 50s, western tales more interested in the grandeur of the frontier and the simple purity of the feelings of characters isolated from the more decadent big cities. With a keen eye for vocabulary and scene setting, Probst takes us to Texas and introduces us to a gentle, bookish lad named Ethan who supports his mother and older brother Willie (whose activities include drinking, whoring, and crime) by working in a store. Into this gentle time enters a handsome cowboy Travis, looking for a place to stay while he waits for the job of the summer - driving a herd of cattle to Colorado. Travis causes an unfamiliar response within Ethan, an emotional and sensual feeling that is as new as spring rain. Through a series of conversations and incidents, Travis convinces Ethan to accompany him on the cattle drive and Ethan makes his first break from his family to follow the mystery that he finds in Travis.

What follows is one of the most understated love stories on paper, and that is not to say that this novel fears commitment to gay love and expression of feelings physically: Probst writes with dignity and subtlety and in doing so he manages to weave a truly romantic novel instead of a story of descriptive lust. The two men fall in love and when the cattle drive is complete they return home to tell their families of their plans to move to the Rockies to raise horses. A surprise tragedy occurs, one that causes the ugly head of homophobia to threaten the story's end, but Probst guides the bonded couple through a perilous experience, assuring us that the sun always rises in good westerns.

The story may sound simplistic, but it is peppered with very well drawn secondary characters, each of whom plays a significant role in the story. There is no 'filler' here, no meaningless meandering through sidebars that squelch the momentum of the story. Probst writes beautifully and while some may criticize the Romantic approach of his writing, the poetry fits the melody – and the song is a fine one! THE FILLY is a strong novel by a fine writer and for a first work, this book will be a standard by which his certain subsequent novels will be judged. Grady Harp, December 07

Reading THE FILLY brought a wave of nostalgia. As a young person some of my favorite books and movies were Westerns. I read every horse story in our public library, and still remember whole scenes from My Friend Flicka, Smoky the Cowhorse, The Red Pony, and The Tiger Roan. I never missed the Western matinee movies on Saturday afternoon (two movies, newsreel, cartoon, superhero serial, singalong, and previews for twenty-five cents!). The film "Red River" made a huge and lasting impression on me; it was and still is one of the best. And, of course, as an adult I never missed an episode of "Rawhide" on tv.

Mark Probst's THE FILLY has a lot of things in common with Red River. They are both built around a cattle drive of hundreds of miles, they both have dust, raging storms, collapsing cattle, hardship, exhausted men, fights, threats, and death along the trail. Both "Red River" and THE FILLY have protagonists-- in this case two of them, Ethan and Travis--who are brave yet sensitive, not violent by nature but willing and able to fight when necessary. The big difference is in "Red River" Montgomery Clift and John Wayne beat the daylights out of each other, and in THE FILLY Ethan and Travis fall in love.

Seventeen-year-old Ethan is a dreamer and a bookworm who wants more than anything in the world to own his own horse, a filly he can raise and train. He has no sexual experience and is rocked by his inexplicable attraction to the new cowboy in town, 22-year-old Travis. Travis, on the other hand, is attracted to Ethan but he knows the score and decides to do something about it. He convinces Ethan to join the cattle drive. Over the months and the miles Ethan and Travis became friends long before they explore either their feelings or their physical need. They plan a future together on a horse ranch of their own. When the cattle drive ends and they have money in hand, they are free to begin their new life. Suddenly harsh reality and violence from an unexpected source stop them dead in their tracks.

Travis and Ethan are likable and sympathetic, and the author's descriptions, especially of the cattle drive, are vivid; you can almost taste the dust. The explicitness of the sex scenes in The Filly is just right for my taste, leaving most of it to the reader's imagination.

I have only two very small quibbles with the story. The first is that, for his age and the era, Travis seems a little too calmly self-understanding in his acceptance and explanation of his own homosexuality, and this gives a very slight feel of being off-kilter historically. The other relates to a startling time gap at the end, which I won't detail because it would be a spoiler. This is Mark Probst's first novel, and that's how writers learn.

Those two small quibbles aside, this is a book that could be given without a qualm to anyone open to a love story between men, but especially to a gay teen. The cover, incidentally, is very attractive and well done; you don't have to hide it from your granny.

I look forward to another book from this author... perhaps a sequel about Travis and Ethan? I can hope.

THE FILLY is highly recommended!