The Collected Novels Volume One

Three beautiful novels from the groundbreaking, award-winning author—including “a landmark work of lesbian fiction” and basis for the film Desert Hearts (The New York Times).
 
First published in 1964, Desert of the Heart broke ground with its realistic and complex portrayal of love between two women, and immediately established Jane Rule’s reputation as an “extraordinary writer—perhaps the most significant lesbian fiction writer of the twentieth century” (Katherine V. Forrest).
 
Desert of the Heart: Rule’s debut novel is set in 1950s Reno, Nevada, where English professor Evelyn Hall has come for a quick divorce from her husband. There she meets Ann Childs, fifteen years her junior, who works as a change apron in a casino. As their friendship deepens into a romantic relationship, Evelyn’s preconceptions about love, morality, and identity are challenged.
 
“An intelligent and utterly believable novel.” —Joyce Carol Oates
 
The Young in One Another’s Arms: In Ruth Wheeler’s Vancouver rooming house during the Vietnam War, an eclectic assortment of misfits, dropouts, deserters, and radicals become each other’s chosen family. When developers threaten the property, the community is challenged to find a new home on Galiano Island.
 
“[A] mature and satisfying work.” —Bay Area Reporter
 
This Is Not for You: Through a decades-long correspondence between Katherine and Esther, the woman with whom she falls passionately in love, Rule’s second novel follows a group of friends living in New York and abroad as they explore the freedoms—and limitations—of their sexuality, as the repressed fifties gives way to the liberated sixties.
 
“A beautiful, ironic, civilized novel.” —Margaret Lawrence