James Fenimore Cooper

Jack Tier James Fenimore Cooper

Jack Tier, or the Florida Reef is a novel by James Fenimore Cooper first published in 1848 by New York publisher Hurd and Houghton. Set during the Mexican-American war, the novel relates a twenty-year homosocial relationship verging on the homoerotic between a sailor and the captain of the boat. But by the end of the novel the sailor is the captain's wife, transforming the story into a story of heterosexual love and passion. The novel was first published serially in a magazine under the title Rose Budd in 1846. When commenting on the novel in the context of other novels about the Mexican-American War, critic Jaime Javier Rodríguez describes the novel as "an obscure work not always found in library stacks remains largely unread but it too deserves attention."