Her first novel, Desert of the Heart, was published in 1964 - five years before homosexuality was decriminalized in Canada.

Rule was an acute observer of social and emotional relationships, homosexual and heterosexual, and wrote about them with refreshing candour. In 1976, the couple moved to Galiano Island, BC, and lived together until Sonthoff’s death in 2000. She was joined in Vancouver by her partner, Helen Sonthoff, an English professor who specialized in Canadian literature. Rule became assistant director at International House at the University of British Columbia (1958–59) and lectured in English and creative writing at UBC (1959–76). Rule became a Canadian citizen in the early 1960s ( see Citizenship). As both a rejection of contemporary American politics and an embrace of the city - Rule wrote that Vancouver was “the most beautiful spot I'd ever seen in my life” - she decided to settle on the west coast.

When Hulcoop was hired as an English professor at UBC in 1956, Rule went with him to Vancouver to help him find an apartment. During this period, she met John Hulcoop, a British literary critic and academic who now serves as professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She later followed a girlfriend to London, England, and attended classes at University College there. In 1952, she earned a bachelor of arts in English from Mills College, a liberal arts women’s college in California. As a teenager, Rule was inspired by The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 novel about lesbians, and went on to pursue writing in college. She was a perpetual outsider throughout her childhood, suffering from dyslexia and towering above classmates at a height of 6 feet (1.8 m) by the age of 12. Rule was born into a military family in New Jersey and spent her childhood moving from base to base while her father served in the Second World War.

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