Desert of the Heart

When Jane Rule’s 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 Reno, Nevada in the summer of 1958 in order to obtain a divo...