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 [thus it] remains largely unread but it too deserves attention." From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).

['Illustrated by the authors.', 'American edition has title: Two vagabonds in Spain.']

Two sheep farmers and their sheepdogs engage in a years-long battle to prove their superiority in handling sheep with the son of one caught between. Bob is the last of the famous shepherd line of Gray Dogs of Kenmuir. His alcoholic master, Adam M'Adam, doesn't believe the dog is as good as his forebears, until Bob gives his life to save the flock from a ravenous wolf of the Scottish highlands.