Synopses & Reviews
When Jane Rules first novel,
Desert of the Heart, was published in 1964, it was an auspicious beginning for a writer who would build a reputation on her unflinching views about sexuality, relationships and the painful constrictions of societal convention. Even more astonishing is the way in which the novel has retained its cool quiet beauty and power of expression decades later.
Evelyn Hall is a literature professor who travels to the divorce capital of mid-century America, Reno, Nevada, in the summer of 1958 to put an end to her disastrous sixteen-year marriage. She is divorcing her husband for his own good and on the advice of his psychiatrist because, this being the 1950s, the doctor believes that Evelyns career success is causing her husbands feelings of inferiority and depression. At the boarding house where she stays to fulfill the six-week residency required for a quickie divorce, Evelyn meets Ann Childs.
Ann is most alluring in her representation of freedom to Evelyn, from her artistic prowess to her unconventional liaisons amid the smoky nocturnal backdrop of casino life. And once these women have found the promise of a significant relationship, Rules open-ended question is whether or not they can survive the toxic atmosphere, not simply of an unruly gambling town, but of the past sorrows and hardships each of the characters is attempting to put behind them.
The title derives from W.H. Audens elegy for YeatsIn the desert of the heart / Let the healing fountain start.”
Review
"Cool, clear-eyed, compassionate and unsentimental."
Globe and Mail
"An intelligent and utterly believable novel."
Joyce Carol Oates
Review
Cool, clear-eyed, compassionate and unsentimental.”
Globe and Mail
An intelligent and utterly believable novel.”
Joyce Carol Oates
In the context of lesbian literary history, Desert of the Heart is among the first novels to end happily, or at least end with the idea that happiness might be achievable.”
Xtra!
Synopsis
Set in the late fifties in Reno, Nevada, this classic of lesbian eroticism is Jane Rules first novel.
Synopsis
Two women meet and fall in love in Reno, Nevada. Evelyn Hall has gone there to get a divorce from her husband; Ann Childs works there as a change girl in a gambling casino. The movie Desert Hearts is based on this first novel by Jane Rule.
About the Author
Jane Rule was born in New Jersey in 1931 and came to Canada in 1956, where she later taught at the University of B.C. Her first novel,
Desert of the Heart (1991), was made into a movie in the 1980s. Rule emerged as one of the most respected writers in Canada with her many novels, essays and collections of short stories including
Theme for Diverse Instruments (1975). Rule passed away in 2007.