Maybe Jack Sparrow really was gay

I've read several "historical" gay novels in which a gay couple is put in some historic setting, such as pre-Saxon England or joining King Richard on the last Crusade. This usually beats yet another coming of age/coming out angst laden book. But I just finished one that has a lot more historical accuracy -- it is a rare novel that has a bibliography. The book is "Brethren: Raised by Wolves, book 1" by W.A. Hoffman (I wish I knew the gender of the author because there is a tantalizing dedication to "my husband"). An English nobleman's gay son concludes he has no place in England, so in 1666 he agrees to go to Jamaica to nominally oversee his father's sugar cane plantation there. Once there he encounters the buccaneer way of life. These men and ships are "licensed" by the English to harass Spanish ships. The buccaneer ships are societies of only men. While some of them "favor women" and are willing, due to the lack of women, to have relations with men for release, a good number of them "favor men" and are quite happy with an all male society. Depicting Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean as gay may be historically accurate. The ship isn't a large orgy, however. Most men pair up in a relationship that gives them more respect, rights, and responsibilities than a straight marriage of the time and done with a lot less official bureaucracy. That implies it usually is done for love rather than politics. Some of the unattached men are counseled to establish a partnership, even if it is only of convenience, so that other men won't fight over them.

The subtitle "Raised by Wolves" is from a theory of class distinction the nobleman's son came up with. Nobles and wolves and peasants are sheep. The mindsets are quite different. A sheep thinks nothing of being herded. A wolf would never allow that. The differences are explored throughout the book. About halfway through the gay son decides that though he was raised by wolves, he really isn't one, though he isn't a sheep either.

I enjoyed the book enough that I'll probably get books 2 and 3 eventually, even though each book is 500-600 pages.