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The Young in One Another's Arms: A Novel
An award-winning novel of lesbian identity and camaraderie amid violence and war
Ruth Wheeler is the one-armed caretaker of a motley crew of boarders living in her rooming house in Vancouver, British Columbia. The miscreants and outcasts in residence include a sexually confused academic, a one-time-dope-addict-turned-law-student, a high-minded deserter of the Vietnam War, a socially conscious female radical, and a gay man on the run from the cops. Despite personal differences and a turbulent outside world teeming with police brutality, the renters’ affection for one another grows and they form a progressive and idealistic “chosen family.”
However, Ruth’s devoted and assimilative spirit is put to the test when her property is slotted to be destroyed by developers. The household packs up and sails to Galiano Island, where they establish a new home, start a business, and strive to overcome the initial antipathy of their neighbors. They even decide to collectively raise a baby born from an unwanted pregnancy.
Winner of the 1978 Canadian Authors Association Best Novel of the Year Award, The Young in One Another’s Arms stands as one of the most sophisticated portrayals of an alternative model for domestic life.
Ruth Wheeler is the one-armed caretaker of a motley crew of boarders living in her rooming house in Vancouver, British Columbia. The miscreants and outcasts in residence include a sexually confused academic, a one-time-dope-addict-turned-law-student, a high-minded deserter of the Vietnam War, a socially conscious female radical, and a gay man on the run from the cops. Despite personal differences and a turbulent outside world teeming with police brutality, the renters’ affection for one another grows and they form a progressive and idealistic “chosen family.”
However, Ruth’s devoted and assimilative spirit is put to the test when her property is slotted to be destroyed by developers. The household packs up and sails to Galiano Island, where they establish a new home, start a business, and strive to overcome the initial antipathy of their neighbors. They even decide to collectively raise a baby born from an unwanted pregnancy.
Winner of the 1978 Canadian Authors Association Best Novel of the Year Award, The Young in One Another’s Arms stands as one of the most sophisticated portrayals of an alternative model for domestic life.
230 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1977
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273 people want to read
About the author
Jane Rule
33 books88 followersJane Vance Rule was a Canadian writer of lesbian-themed novels and non-fiction. American by birth and Canadian by choice, Rule's pioneering work as a writer and activist reached across borders.
Rule was born on March 28, 1931, in Plainfield, New Jersey, and raised in the Midwest and California. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Mills College in 1952. In 1954 she joined the faculty of the Concord Academy, a private school in Massachusetts. There Rule met Helen Sonthoff, a fellow faculty member who became her life partner. They settled in Vancouver in 1956. Eventually they both held positions at the University of British Columbia until 1976 when they moved to Galiano Island. Sonthoff died in 2000, at 83. Rule died at the age of 76 on November 28, 2007 at her home on Galiano Island due to complications from liver cancer, refusing any treatment that would take her from the island.
A major literary figure in Canada, she wrote seven novels as well as short stories and nonfiction. But it was for Desert of the Heart that she remained best known. The novel published in 1964, is about a professor of English literature who meets and falls in love with a casino worker in Reno. It was made into a movie by Donna Deitch called Desert Hearts in 1985, which quickly became a lesbian classic.
Rule, who became a Canadian citizen in the 1960s, was awarded the Order of British Columbia in 1998 and the Order of Canada in 2007. In 1994, Rule was the subject of a Genie-awarding winning documentary, Fiction and Other Truths; a film about Jane Rule, directed by Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman, produced by Rina Fraticelli. She received the Canadian Authors Association best novel and best short story awards, the American Gay Academic Literature Award, the U.S. Fund for Human Dignity Award of Merit, the CNIB's Talking Book of the Year Award and an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of British Columbia. In January of 2007, Rule was awarded the Alice B. Toklas Medal “for her long and storied career as a lesbian novelist.”
Proud Life - Jane Rule: 1931 - 2007 by Marilyn Schuster
Jane Rule 1996 - George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award
Rule was born on March 28, 1931, in Plainfield, New Jersey, and raised in the Midwest and California. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Mills College in 1952. In 1954 she joined the faculty of the Concord Academy, a private school in Massachusetts. There Rule met Helen Sonthoff, a fellow faculty member who became her life partner. They settled in Vancouver in 1956. Eventually they both held positions at the University of British Columbia until 1976 when they moved to Galiano Island. Sonthoff died in 2000, at 83. Rule died at the age of 76 on November 28, 2007 at her home on Galiano Island due to complications from liver cancer, refusing any treatment that would take her from the island.
A major literary figure in Canada, she wrote seven novels as well as short stories and nonfiction. But it was for Desert of the Heart that she remained best known. The novel published in 1964, is about a professor of English literature who meets and falls in love with a casino worker in Reno. It was made into a movie by Donna Deitch called Desert Hearts in 1985, which quickly became a lesbian classic.
Rule, who became a Canadian citizen in the 1960s, was awarded the Order of British Columbia in 1998 and the Order of Canada in 2007. In 1994, Rule was the subject of a Genie-awarding winning documentary, Fiction and Other Truths; a film about Jane Rule, directed by Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman, produced by Rina Fraticelli. She received the Canadian Authors Association best novel and best short story awards, the American Gay Academic Literature Award, the U.S. Fund for Human Dignity Award of Merit, the CNIB's Talking Book of the Year Award and an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of British Columbia. In January of 2007, Rule was awarded the Alice B. Toklas Medal “for her long and storied career as a lesbian novelist.”
Proud Life - Jane Rule: 1931 - 2007 by Marilyn Schuster
Jane Rule 1996 - George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
September 21, 2018
The Young in One Another's Arms reminded me very strongly of an older gay couple I know. When they purchased their big Victorian in the 1970s, it was being used as a cheap boardinghouse and is still zoned as such. Like most same-sex couples from this era, they never had children. They've always had long-term roommates, however, and today host a weekly potluck that usually includes international students renting their various other properties around the urban neighborhood they helped to stabilize. The reality is, while mainstream activism has often showcased gay and lesbian couples living otherwise traditional "white picket fence" lives as a means of normalization, LGBT people have long been redefining what it means to be a family and community.
Published in 1977, this subject of unconventional living arrangements might have marked The Young in One Another's Arms as queer book even without the openly gay and bisexual characters. As Katherine V. Forrest's introduction notes, the interaction between middle-aged Ruth and her beloved mother-in-law is reminiscent of a longtime lesbian couple, while Ruth's various young boarders fill the role of surrogate adult children. While I can understand how some readers might find this book boring - it's quite down-to-earth in both plot and characterization - the political backdrop of the Vietnam War creates an underlying tension always threatening to bring disaster. The story is set in Canada, and several of Ruth's boarders are men who fled north to avoid the draft. The idea of Americans as essentially political refugees living illegally in another country and targeted by its version of the ICE is incredibly jarring. But that is also what The Young in One Another's Arms is very good at doing without the artifice of heated rhetoric and grand plot gestures: demonstrating another side to life and society through very ordinary folks. Definitely worthy of a place in the North America LGBT canon.
Published in 1977, this subject of unconventional living arrangements might have marked The Young in One Another's Arms as queer book even without the openly gay and bisexual characters. As Katherine V. Forrest's introduction notes, the interaction between middle-aged Ruth and her beloved mother-in-law is reminiscent of a longtime lesbian couple, while Ruth's various young boarders fill the role of surrogate adult children. While I can understand how some readers might find this book boring - it's quite down-to-earth in both plot and characterization - the political backdrop of the Vietnam War creates an underlying tension always threatening to bring disaster. The story is set in Canada, and several of Ruth's boarders are men who fled north to avoid the draft. The idea of Americans as essentially political refugees living illegally in another country and targeted by its version of the ICE is incredibly jarring. But that is also what The Young in One Another's Arms is very good at doing without the artifice of heated rhetoric and grand plot gestures: demonstrating another side to life and society through very ordinary folks. Definitely worthy of a place in the North America LGBT canon.
September 2, 2014
This is the first book by Jane Rule that I've read and I really wanted to like it more than I did as she's got the reputation for being a really good writer. Unfortunately, I just found it quite dull. I think the biggest problem for me was the characterisation, or lack of it. I had a lot of trouble telling the characters apart and remembering who was who. All the women and nearly all the men seemed quite interchangeable. It also seemed to be walking the line between realism and melodrama a bit too much. Characters seemed quite normal, and yet there was lots of death and shootings and arrests. It just felt quite odd. I'm glad I borrowed this from the library instead of buying my own copy.
January 15, 2019
3.5 stars*
Throughout this book, I kept thinking that the word “melancholy” describes the tone of the novel very well......I’m not 100% on what the definition of melancholy is, but this book is a really solid mix of grief/sadness and happier love+connection feelings.
It’s very “of it’s time” (and not just because there’s draft dodgers and the group is thought to be hippies) but one of the recurring themes is the development of the natural world and how that’s taking away from the “simpler times” or whatever it is that Ruth feels is being lost. I feel like through these characters I understand a bit of the unrest that was happening in that decade. The plot is not very important, it’s more of a character study. The writing flows nicely and emotions are subtly built-up to a point where you feel like nothing is happening but then you’re crying (I didn’t for real cry, but I definitely almost did and stopped myself). If anything, I appreciate the writerly skill it takes to do a character study where a lot is conveyed emotionally even if nothing much happens plot-wise.
Throughout this book, I kept thinking that the word “melancholy” describes the tone of the novel very well......I’m not 100% on what the definition of melancholy is, but this book is a really solid mix of grief/sadness and happier love+connection feelings.
It’s very “of it’s time” (and not just because there’s draft dodgers and the group is thought to be hippies) but one of the recurring themes is the development of the natural world and how that’s taking away from the “simpler times” or whatever it is that Ruth feels is being lost. I feel like through these characters I understand a bit of the unrest that was happening in that decade. The plot is not very important, it’s more of a character study. The writing flows nicely and emotions are subtly built-up to a point where you feel like nothing is happening but then you’re crying (I didn’t for real cry, but I definitely almost did and stopped myself). If anything, I appreciate the writerly skill it takes to do a character study where a lot is conveyed emotionally even if nothing much happens plot-wise.
August 6, 2022
Very little happens in this novel and when it does, the characters react to it as impassively as if they had heard about it 3rd hand. They are more roiled up about housing and yellow crocuses and seabirds than major life events. One boarder shoots another and is then killed by the police, but hey, no matter, everyone just ambles along. Another attempts to rape his friend, who almost kills him in retaliation; a week later they are playing chess together (as a metaphor for battle of the sexes- seriously). This book was a mess and I’m surprised by the acclaim jt received. Soap opera without the opera.
February 5, 2023
This was very enjoyable for most of the way through (less at and after the rape). It was mostly nuanced although i was amused to see cops as the unambiguous villain of the story...whenever they appeared then really awful things happened and the cops did not care at all for the lives they were routinely smashing up. It was written in the 1970s when I was still preliterate I think but was surprisingly current on some of the themes it looked at (eg bisexuality).
My edition did not actually have the introduction by Katherine V Forrest but I would be very keen to read that. I will read more from Rule.
My edition did not actually have the introduction by Katherine V Forrest but I would be very keen to read that. I will read more from Rule.
February 8, 2021
One of those throwback to the 70's novels, a 50's boardinghouse transitioning to a 70's hippie group house, a lot of characters doing lots of draft dodgy, druggie, Vietnam era political stuff in Vancouver Canada. Plus there's urban displacement, family tragedies, commune-style coming and goings, babies, and a financially hopeless cafe in a scenic seasonal setting accessible only by island ferry. Busy book finished quickly.
August 19, 2025
an eclectic group of people living in a collective house in BC - very progressive for it's time ( a triad relationship with FFM) but written in a style of the time that I find very difficult to get into.
February 5, 2020
NICE BOOK.
May 6, 2024
great grief novel . strange funny sad confusing
May 9, 2024
Beautiful book. Also allowed me to vicariously live my dream of starting a commune.
April 21, 2016
This characters in this novel are simultaneously mired in loss, turmoil, and the politics of the war in Vietnam, yet at their best come together, almost ethereally, to form a tight-knit family, if an unconventional one.
In the age of polyamory and gay marriage, the subtexts (and they are subtexts, this is no gay or even anti-war polemic) seem quaint. But having lived some of those years, it was easy to evoke the understated "radicalism" that underlay everyday life and conversation, the sense that improvement was possible, the starshine glitter of a deep blue sky.
Ruth is a Canadian woman in her 50's who is separated more or less from her husband, loves and supports her mother in law, and has lost both her daughter and an arm. She runs a boardinghouse, the nominal "mother", of characters most certainly on the lam from the US, another who is mentally challenged, and some student/drifters. The outside world has begun an incursion into this household as the book opens, as the home is being demolished for urban renewal.
The fast pace of the ensuing journeys, tragedy and triumphs won't give you much space to catch your balance, but the journey back into time is worth putting on the good shoes.
In the age of polyamory and gay marriage, the subtexts (and they are subtexts, this is no gay or even anti-war polemic) seem quaint. But having lived some of those years, it was easy to evoke the understated "radicalism" that underlay everyday life and conversation, the sense that improvement was possible, the starshine glitter of a deep blue sky.
Ruth is a Canadian woman in her 50's who is separated more or less from her husband, loves and supports her mother in law, and has lost both her daughter and an arm. She runs a boardinghouse, the nominal "mother", of characters most certainly on the lam from the US, another who is mentally challenged, and some student/drifters. The outside world has begun an incursion into this household as the book opens, as the home is being demolished for urban renewal.
The fast pace of the ensuing journeys, tragedy and triumphs won't give you much space to catch your balance, but the journey back into time is worth putting on the good shoes.
February 13, 2008
I've read at least two other books by her, and this was probably my least favorite. Desert of the Heart is one of my all time favorites that I've read many times, but this one didn't please me nearly as much.
March 31, 2008
I have certainly read worse books. A disparate (age/race) group of folks end up living together. I still haven't figured out what the point was of the dominant woman only having one arm. I'd read it again if I lived on an island somewhere. (Oh, I do.)
July 11, 2008
Some things however revolutionary at the time... are just the same ideals that come up again and again against a christian patriarchy.
November 6, 2015
i'm happy i finally read some jane rule! i love the little snippets of vancouver history. although this book is sad, with many tragedies, it's still really uplifting in an unexpected way.
July 9, 2016
This novel is about Ruth and her boarders who are more like family.
It's well written but I found it a bit boring. For most of it I couldn't really connect with the story or the characters.
It's well written but I found it a bit boring. For most of it I couldn't really connect with the story or the characters.
Want to read
January 9, 2009I've had this mass-market paperback for a few years now, and I need to read it.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews