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Verdict: A landmark 1964 lesbian novel that treats two women’s love as something to think through rather than punish, intelligent and unexpectedly modern, but held back by a cerebral, talky style that keeps the passion at arm’s length.
Best for: Readers who want to know where modern sapphic fiction came from, who like their love stories slow and full of ideas, and who can live with dense introspection and a 1950s view of psychology.
Heat level: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5 — understated and literary; romance.io lists the book without assigning a steam rating)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.8/5 — a 3.90 Goodreads average across 5,200 ratings, with a quiet but consistent complaint about how dry it reads)
Tropes: Age gap, opposites attract, queer awakening, forbidden love, slow burn, divorce as a fresh start, mirror-image lovers, found family, 1950s setting, hopeful ending.
Desert of the Heart by Jane Rule is a 1964 standalone literary novel and one of the founding texts of lesbian historical fiction, set in late-1950s Reno, where Evelyn Hall, an English professor sitting out the six weeks Nevada requires before it will grant her a divorce, meets Ann Childs, a casino change girl fifteen years younger who looks startlingly like her and has no interest in the conventions Evelyn has spent her life obeying.
It holds a 3.90 average across roughly 5,200 Goodreads ratings, it was adapted into Donna Deitch’s 1985 film Desert Hearts, and it reached print only after around 25 American publishers turned it down. The reviews are warmer about what the book meant than about what it is like to read, and that gap is the thing worth understanding before you start.
What Is Desert of the Heart About?
Desert of the Heart is literary fiction first and a love story second. It was published hardback by a mainstream house at a time when almost every novel about women loving women was a paperback pulp obliged to end in madness, death or a return to men. Rule refused that bargain, and the refusal is the book’s historical significance. It is also a novel of ideas, which means marriage, guilt, gambling, chance and the idea of the “normal” get as much page time as the romance.
Evelyn arrives with nothing she can name as missing — a career, a long, respectable and quietly dead marriage, a carefully managed sense of herself. What she lacks is permission. Ann assumes she needs none: she works the casino floor, draws cartoons, has a history with men and women, and treats the idea of a life built on rules as slightly absurd. The narration moves between the two women in close third person, which lets Rule set Evelyn’s anxious analysis against Ann’s impatience.
What Makes This Classic Lesbian Novel Work
- It refuses the tragic ending: This is the point readers raise most often. For 1964, a lesbian love story that is allowed to end hopefully was close to unheard of, and reviewers keep coming back to how much that must have meant to its first readers.
- The characters are real people: StoryGraph readers vote 77% character-driven and 75% “strong character development,” and Goodreads reviewers repeatedly say nobody here is flat or cartoonish, supporting cast included.
- It reads as surprisingly modern: “Modern” is the recurring word. Readers expect a museum piece and find frank talk about marriage, desire and self-deception that has barely dated.
- Reno as a setting: The casino, the boarding house and the desert give the book its images. The desert frightens Evelyn and consoles Ann, and the title comes from Auden’s elegy for Yeats.
- An age-gap romance with ideas in it: The fifteen years between the women are not decoration. The novel keeps asking what the difference means, which is also where its most divisive material comes from.
Book Synopsis
Evelyn Hall steps off the plane in Reno with a plan to be invisible. She has taken a room in a boarding house run by Frances Packer, she has six weeks to wait before a Nevada court will end her marriage, and she intends to spend them quietly, marking time, feeling as little as possible. She is a professor of English. Feeling as little as possible is something she is good at.
Ann Childs lives in the same house and works in one of the casinos downtown, making change for the gamblers and sketching cartoons in her spare hours. She is twenty-five, sharp, restless and blunt, and the physical likeness between the two women is impossible for either of them to ignore. Ann is interested in Evelyn from the start, and makes little effort to hide it. Evelyn tells herself the interest she returns is friendship — then something close to maternal, then something she has no word for at all.
Around them the town runs on luck. Frances has her own history and a teenage son, Walter, to worry about, and Ann’s former boss Bill knows more about Ann’s private life than she would like. As the divorce hearing draws closer, Evelyn has to decide whether the life she is leaving behind was really the only kind available to her, and whether she can trust a woman who seems to have no use for rules.
My Review
What impresses me most is the nerve. Rule wrote this at the start of the 1960s, when a novel like it could cost a woman her job — publishing it threatened her own post at the University of British Columbia — and she wrote it without apology. Nobody is punished for loving a woman. Nobody goes mad. The book lets two adults think about what they want and then, cautiously, go after it. Readers who know the history keep saying this was a lifeline, and The Lesbian Review’s audiobook reviewer calls it essential reading. I agree with both.
The second strength is how intelligent it is. Evelyn is a scholar and thinks like one, and Rule gives her an interior life full of argument and self-justification that the reader can see through before she does. Ann is written with equal care, and the minor characters — Frances in particular — have lives that do not exist just to serve the plot. At roughly 220 pages it is short, which suits a book this concentrated.
Where it struggles is exactly where it shines, and this is the complaint I kept finding in reviews that were otherwise fond of the book: it is dry. Several readers describe pages of interior monologue and dialogue that sounds like a seminar, and a smaller group say plainly that there is no spark. Around that sit the dated elements. The book leans hard on the physical resemblance between the women and on the mother-and-daughter shape of their feelings, and it borrows mid-century psychology — Oedipal readings, a passing connection between left-handedness and inversion — that reads badly now. StoryGraph’s 3.71 average sits below Goodreads’ 3.90, which fits a book more admired than loved, but its 3% did-not-finish rate is low, so people who start it tend to finish it.
One expectation to reset: many readers come to this from Desert Hearts, and the film is the more romantic of the two. The novel is more philosophical, less sensual on the page, and less interested in a big romantic payoff. If the film is what drew you, expect something cooler and cleverer; if you found the film too slight, this is the fuller version.
My honest note: A landmark that still holds up as a novel, if not always as a romance. Read it for the ideas, the courage and the two women at its centre, and expect to admire it more than you swoon over it.
| Element | In Desert of the Heart |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Evelyn Hall & Ann Childs — a divorcing English professor and a casino worker fifteen years her junior |
| Core tropes | Age gap, opposites attract, queer awakening, forbidden love, slow burn, mirror-image lovers |
| Setting | Reno, Nevada, late 1950s — a boarding house, a casino floor and the surrounding desert |
| Heat level | 2/5 — understated and literary; no romance.io steam rating |
| Series | Standalone — hopeful, open ending; adapted as the 1985 film Desert Hearts |
| Content notes | Suicide attempt and self-harm, lesbophobia and homophobia, alcohol and addiction, death of a child, infidelity and divorce, outing threats, pregnancy, dated psychological views of homosexuality |
How Spicy Is Desert of the Heart?
A 2/5. romance.io lists the book, gives it a 3.90 from its small pool of raters and tags it as f-f and age difference, but assigns no steam rating. So the number comes from reader reports and from the book’s own era. The desire is plain and the relationship is consummated, but Rule writes intimacy with restraint, and the romance is carried by conversation and tension rather than scenes. Readers expecting a romance novel’s heat are among the ones who call it dry.
The element worth knowing in advance is the mother-and-daughter framing of the attraction, reinforced by how alike the two women look. Some readers find it psychologically rich and others find it off-putting, and it is the most discussed feature of the love story. No reviewer I found flags anything more explicit than that. For the same low, literary heat, The Night Watch and The Gilda Stories sit in the same band.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you care about the history of lesbian fiction, you like novels of ideas where characters argue their way towards love, you enjoy an age-gap romance written by adults for adults, and you want a classic that does not end in tragedy.
You may want to skip it if: you need on-page heat and big romantic payoffs, long passages of introspection lose you, dated psychology about mothers and daughters will sour the whole thing for you, or you want a diverse cast rather than two educated white women.
In short: a brave, clever and surprisingly modern classic, better at making you think than making you swoon.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)
Sixty years after publication, nothing new has made this book suddenly popular. I found no BookTok moment, though TikTok itself could not be searched from here, and Reddit, where readers argue about classics in detail, could not be checked either. What keeps it in circulation is its reputation as a landmark, plus two bridges to modern readers. The first is the film: readers arrive from Desert Hearts constantly, and Amazon’s own review summary singles out one customer who found the novel better than the movie. The second is availability. Open Road Media keeps it in print as an ebook, and Tantor Media released an unabridged audiobook in February 2020, narrated by Traci Odom and running 7 hours 46 minutes. The Lesbian Review’s audio reviewer called that edition perfectly performed and said she would listen again.
Prefer audio? Listen to Desert of the Heart on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The history comes first and most consistently. Reviewers describe the book as groundbreaking, a lifeline for women who read it in the sixties, and one of the founding texts of the genre. Then the modernity — readers are repeatedly surprised by how current its thinking on marriage and desire feels. The character work draws steady praise, and the Globe and Mail’s verdict, quoted on the Open Road edition, calls it “cool, clear-eyed, compassionate and unsentimental.” Several readers who know the film say the novel is more complex and more satisfying, and a minority single out the prose itself as some of the best they have read, which matters because the prose is also the main complaint.
What readers argue about and complain about: The style, first. Dense introspection, long monologues and philosophical dialogue are the most common criticism in the Goodreads reviews, and the word “dry” keeps turning up, sometimes alongside “no spark.” Second, the mother-daughter framing. Around half a dozen reviewers mention it, and the unhappy ones find the emphasis on resemblance and maternal feeling uncomfortable or unsatisfying. Third, the dated psychology: a handful object to the Freudian scaffolding, one reviewer bluntly calling the equation of lesbianism with perverse parent-child feeling weird. Beyond that, a couple of readers note the narrow world of affluent white women, and StoryGraph readers vote 51% “no” on a diverse cast. Pace divides opinion too: 41% of StoryGraph readers call it slow, 47% medium.
The standalone question worth asking first: it is a standalone. The ending is hopeful rather than tidy — the two women choose each other without pretending to know how long it will last — and for 1964 that open door is the whole point. Rule wrote a good deal more afterwards, but Goodreads lists Desert of the Heart as her most popular book, holding more than a quarter of all the ratings across her 33 titles. If you want the story told with more romance and less philosophy, watch Desert Hearts afterwards; the two make a good pair.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Desert of the Heart have a happy ending?
A hopeful one. Evelyn and Ann choose to be together after the divorce, without any promises about forever. For a lesbian novel published in 1964 that was radical, and it is the main reason the book matters.
How spicy is Desert of the Heart?
Low — about a 2/5. romance.io lists the book without a steam rating, and readers describe the intimacy as restrained and literary. The relationship is physical, but the page time goes to conversation and tension.
Is Desert of the Heart the book behind Desert Hearts?
Yes. Donna Deitch adapted it as the 1985 film Desert Hearts. Readers who know both say the novel is more philosophical and complex, while the film is more romantic.
Is Desert of the Heart a romance novel?
Not in the modern genre sense. It is literary fiction with a love story at its centre, and it spends as much time on marriage, guilt and chance as on the relationship. Readers expecting a romance novel are the ones most likely to call it dry.
Is there an audiobook of Desert of the Heart?
Yes. Tantor Media released an unabridged edition in February 2020, narrated by Traci Odom and running 7 hours 46 minutes. The Lesbian Review praised the performance.
If You Loved Desert of the Heart, Read These Next
The closest companion is Carol, Patricia Highsmith’s 1950s age-gap romance, which also dared to end hopefully and also became a celebrated film. For the tragic tradition Rule was writing against, read The Well of Loneliness. For the same decade told with far more warmth and romance, Last Night at the Telegraph Club takes you to 1950s San Francisco.
For more in this vein, browse our best sapphic books of all time, our age-gap lesbian books list, or the full Book Reviews collection.
The Bottom Line
Desert of the Heart set out to write two women’s love as something worth thinking about rather than something to be punished, and it succeeded. The ending that refuses tragedy, the fully realised characters and the surprisingly modern ideas all still land. The dry, talky style, the mother-daughter framing and the dated psychology all show their age. Whether it works for you depends on whether you want a novel of ideas or a romance, but anyone interested in where sapphic fiction came from should read it at least once. Check Desert of the Heart on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Desert of the Heart ranks as a landmark literary lesbian classic — brave, intelligent and surprisingly modern, held back by a cerebral style and dated psychology, and best approached for its ideas and its history rather than for heat or swoon.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ 3.90 average across 5,200 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ Hopeful ending made it a landmark
- ✓ Only 3% did-not-finish on StoryGraph
- ✓ Dry style the most repeated complaint
Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ Genuine tension between opposite temperaments
- ✓ Attraction built slowly over six weeks
- ✓ Relationship treated with dignity, not shame
- ✓ Several readers find no spark
Characters ★★★★☆ 4.2/5
- ✓ 75% on StoryGraph cite strong development
- ✓ 77% vote the book character-driven
- ✓ Supporting cast feels real, not cartoonish
- ✓ Narrow world of affluent white women
Writing ★★★★☆ 3.7/5
- ✓ Intelligent, precise and image-rich prose
- ✓ Desert and casino symbolism well used
- ✓ A minority call it the best they’ve read
- ✓ Dense monologues read as dry to many
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ Readers call it a lifeline for its era
- ✓ 63% of StoryGraph readers tag it emotional
- ✓ Divorce and self-deception land hard
- ✓ Cerebral style keeps passion at a distance
Heat Level ★★☆☆☆ 2/5
- ✓ Relationship is physical, not chaste
- ✓ Intimacy written with restraint
- ✓ No romance.io steam rating assigned
- ✓ Mother-daughter framing unsettles some readers
Ending ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ Hopeful ending, radical for 1964
- ✓ Standalone, nothing left hanging
- ✓ Earned through Evelyn’s slow change
- ✓ Open rather than a full HEA
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.7/5
- ✓ Short at roughly 220 pages
- ✓ Ideas reward a second reading
- ✓ 7h46m audiobook praised as a second pass
- ✓ Slow, talky middle discourages rereading
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