Missouri

What follows is a love story, but without a lot of the romantic trappings common to the genre; in particular, the two fellows' struggles with head lice are less romantic than comic, gross and ultimately very historically accurate. It may take a European to fully deconstruct the myth of lighting out for the West to find freedom, and this novel makes a good case for Wunnicke as that writer.
-Sacramento News & Review Sacramento News & Review

Missouri is grand in its landscapes and romance. Plus, Wunnicke has come up with a queer pair of lovers who might make you quit Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar.

-Uptown (Winnipeg) Uptown

Missouri blends Americans and Englishmen, guns and poetry, cowboys and aristocrats, creating a compelling work that's both entertaining and thought-provoking.

-Gay & Lesbian Review Gay & Lesbian Review

Douglas Fortescue is a vaunted British poet and aesthete forced to flee to mid-1800s America with his brother after an Oscar Wildean scandal; orphaned Joshua Jenkyns is a wild-lad outlaw terrorizing the Midwest while carrying in his saddlebags Fortescue's collections of poetry - enigmatic words that speak to the boy's unarticulated sexual longings. Wunnicke's depiction of their doomed love, beautifully bleak and emotionally astute, is a most uncommon gay romance.
-Richard Labonte, Book Marks Book Marks

Beautifully translated.... The usual point of comparison with prose featuring cowboys is Brokeback Mountain, but Missouri is not really anything like the now infamous Annie Proulx story. Wunnicke's writing is just enough; each segment of her novel is sublimely considered and executed.

-Attitude Attitude

The year is 1832 and young poet Douglas Fortescue is the talk of literary London. Across the Atlantic, Joshua Jenkyns has just committed his first murder at the age of six and has retrieved from his victim's coat pocket a copy of the collected works of Byron. This stark novella tells the tale of how their fates become intertwined. Why such a story should come from a German writer is anybody's guess but Wunnicke's imagined American west is as brutal a place as anything Larry McMurtry or Jim Jarmusch has ever created. The drama and singularity of these two characters take the reader to some unusual places and the book is a passionate tribute to the power of words.

-Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, Australia) Sydney Morning Herald

We loved it. With surprises around each turn of the plot, this beautiful love story shows two totally opposite and very memorable characters who grow more and more alike throughout their relationship. Chosen as one of the GLBTRT Over the Rainbow Project Top Eleven for 2011, Missouri will no doubt become another classic like Brokeback Mountain. -American Library Association GLBT Round Table ALA GLBT Round Table

The original German text gets an impeccable translation by David Miller. Gay Times (UK) Gay Times