Broken Blades — Aleksandr Voinov

Rainbow Award Winner 2016 “Best Gay Book”

They only had one night together -- a stolen interlude at the 1936 Olympics. After Mark Driscoll challenged Armin Truchsess von Kardenberg to a good-natured fencing match, there was no resisting each other. Though from different worlds -- an Iowa farm boy and a German aristocrat -- they were immediately drawn together, and it was an encounter neither has ever forgotten.

Now it's 1944, and a plane crash in hostile territory throws them back together, but on opposite sides of a seemingly endless war. Facing each other as opponents is one thing. As enemies, another thing entirely. And to make matters worse, Mark is a POW, held in a cold, remote castle in Germany … in a camp run by Armin.

They aren't the young athletes they were back then. The war has taken much from them, leaving both gray beyond their years, shell-shocked, and battered. The connection they had back then is still alive and well, though, and from the moment Mark arrives, they're fencing again -- advancing, retreating, testing defenses.

Have they been given a second chance? Or have time and a brutal war broken both of them beyond repair?