The desert of the heart

Dr. Hall stays at a Nevada ranch where she meets, and falls for, Ann Child ("Evelyn looked at Ann, the child she had always wanted, the friend she once had, the lover she never considered..." ). Evelyn Hall has a hard time fitting in, and Jane Rule cleverly captures the feeling of a fish out of water time after time.

"Whenever there were generalizations about women, Evelyn weighed herself against them and found herself insubstantial," writes Rule, capturing the alienation Evelyn has even from her own gender.

Rule walk many thin lines in the book, whether it's about ownership, freedom, convention or eroticism. "Ann turned, the longing of her body straining against the last reluctance of her mind, and she felt Evelyn's tentative, almost causal beginning gradually give way to an authority of love."

Remember that this was written in 1964.

Desert of the Heart stands as a tour de force in lesbian culture, still as warm and richly engaging today as it was when it was first written.