The Imagination of the Heart is the final chapter in the saga of Sailor Ripley and Lula Pace Fortune, the Romeo and Juliet of the Deep South. Their story began in Barry Gifford’s novel Wild at Heart, which in 1990 was made into a Palme d'Or-winning feature film by David Lynch.

Following Sailor’s death at the age of sixty-five in New Orleans, Lula moved back to her home state of North Carolina. This novel begins fifteen years later when Lula, at age eighty, decides to write a memoir in diary form, reflecting on her life with Sailor while also keeping a journal describing her last road trip: a journey with Beany Thorn, her best friend since childhood, back to New Orleans..

Like a contemporary Book of Revelations, dutifully recorded by Lula as a dialogue between self and soul, it becomes a bittersweet, often dangerous journey into the imagination of the heart, and what may lie beyond.

The author of more than forty published works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, Barry Gifford is one of the few contemporary American writers whose characters are familiar to audiences around the world. Recipient of awards from PEN, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, and the Writers Guild of America, Gifford is one of the enduring voices of his generation.