Five women at critical crossroads in their lives come together in this gem of a novel set on an island off the coast of Vancouver  After the Fire introduces a quintet of very different women as they struggle with abandonment, loss, and new beginnings—both together and alone. There is Karen Tasuki, who recently separated from her partner and wonders if she'll ever get used to being alone . . . until she befriends Red, who cleans houses for the island's privileged inhabitants. Miss James is the eccentric Southern spinster born at the turn of the century. Milly Forbes is a woman whose husband went scot free after stealing twenty years of her life. And the sensible Henrietta Hen Hawkins yearns for her absent, ill husband.   On a rural island that they dub a used-wife lot, the five heroines nurture one another as they cope with loneliness, death, and renewed life. Imbued with wit and compassion, After the Fire is a novel about women loving women and women helping...

The stories in this remarkable collection by Jane Rule explore the relationships among men and women, women and women, and families—both conventional and unconventional From traditional families to relationships that break new ground, this anthology runs the gamut of human emotions. The eponymous heroine "Dulce" is a self-proclaimed muse, witch, whore, "preying lesbian," and "devouring mother" who has a profound effect on the lives of the women and men around her. "His Nor Hers" tracks the unraveling of a marriage—with unexpected results. "The Real World" explores the moral universe of a female mechanic who creates an unconventional family. In "A Matter of Numbers," a divorced math professor falls in love with her twenty-year-old student. And the title story introduces two women—one widowed, one divorced—who rediscover romance aboard a cruise ship.Whether she's turning the spotlight on unfulfilled wives, frustrated husbands, friends,...

Told as a series of interconnected stories, Jane Rule's fifth novel—offering six characters' shifting perspectives—takes us to a place where feminism, creativity, and sexual politics collide Contract with the World follows a group of friends, artists, and lovers as they negotiate the shifting terrain of the 1970s—a time when gay and lesbian politics were just emerging.   Divided into six parts, the novel enters a world marked by desire, ambition, jealousy, and love. We follow these sexually adventurous thirty-something friends as they marry, divorce, take lovers, lose love, and never stop searching for personal and artistic fulfillment. Whether gay, straight, or bisexual, Rule's characters are as much a product of the era that defines them as of the wise and foolhardy choices they make in their own turbulent lives—choices that will have inevitable, sometimes tragic consequences.

Jane Rule's second novel follows a group of friends through New York and abroad as they explore the freedoms—and limitations—of sexuality in a time of stifling social conventionKatherine George—Kate to her intimates—is captain of her high school debating and swimming teams. But beneath her high-achieving exterior is a young woman on a quest for meaning and fulfilling relationships. Through her decades-long correspondence with Esther, the woman with whom she falls passionately in love, Kate shares the story of her journey into womanhood. As the sexually repressed fifties gives way to the liberated sixties, Kate's odyssey takes her further and further from home. This Is Not for You also chronicles the travails of Kate's intimate circle of friends as they, too, come to terms with their sexuality. Years pass before Kate writes her last letter, and can finally let go and move on. Reissued decades after it first appeared, this is a cathartic, unforgettable...

Jane Rule's incandescent third novel explores love, loss, and family . . . and the pieces of ourselves we leave behind Born lame, Amelia Larson lives in the house that has been in her family for generations. Now she has a decision to make: Should she honor the dying wish of her sister, Beatrice, to burn her diaries? There are sixty-nine in all: one journal for each year of Beatrice's life since the age of six. Beginning in 1913 and traversing World War I and beyond, the diaries become a moving counterpoint to Amelia's life as they unpeel layers of family history. As the past starts to impinge on the present, her relations—then and now—come to vivid life. Told from alternating points of view, Against the Season opens an illuminating window into small-town life. As the sins and secrets of a family are revealed through the sometimes-faulty lens of memory, it is a story about the seasons of life and the ties that bind us even beyond death.

“A landmark work of lesbian fiction.” —The New York TimesJane Rule’s first novel—now a classic of gay and lesbian literature—established her as a foremost writer of the vagaries and yearnings of the female heart  Against the backdrop of Reno, Nevada, in the late 1950s, award-winning author Jane Rule chronicles a love affair between two women. When Desert of the Heart opens, Evelyn Hall is on a plane that will take her from her old life in Oakland, California, to Reno, where she plans to divorce her husband of sixteen years. A voluntary exile in a brave new world, she meets a woman who will change her life. Fifteen years younger, Ann Childs works as a change apron in a casino. Evelyn is instantly drawn to the fiercely independent Ann, and their friendship soon evolves into a romantic relationship. An English professor who had always led a conventional life, Evelyn suddenly finds all her beliefs about love, morality, and identity called into question. Peopled by a cast of unforgettable characters, this is a novel that dares to ask whether love between two women can last.  

Discovered in her papers as a handwritten manuscript in 2008, Jane Rule's autobiography is a rich and culturally significant document that follows the first twenty-one years of her life.In writing about her formative years, she is indeed "taking" the measure of her life, assessing its contours of pleasure and pain, and accounting precisely for how it evolved, with great discretion and consideration for those who might have been affected by being represented in her work. She appreciated the ambiguity of the title she chose, with all its implications of suicide: at the end of her writing life, she was submitting herself as a person, not only to the literary and cultural, but also the moral and ethical critique of her readers.At turns deeply moving and witty, Taking My Life probes in emotional and intellectual terms the larger philosophical questions that were to preoccupy her throughout her literary career, and showcases the origins and contexts that gave shape...