The Heart Begins Here is the story of the ever-optimistic, earnest Sara Requier and her disintegrating seven-year relationship with the cynical Wanda Wysoka. While she and her lesbian partner are finally on their dream honeymoon, seven years after they got together, Sara learns that Wanda is in love with a woman with whom she has been secretly having an affair. Sara realizes that all the signs of her partner's infidelity had been there for her to see but that she had remained blind to them. On their return from Hawaii, she also realizes that everyone else in the lesbian community knew about the affair. Along with her relationship struggles, Sara must contend with the drastic changes in the book industry that threaten her feminist bookstore, and as a mother who refuses to accept her daughter's lesbianism. Sara, who had fulfilled Wanda's dream by opening a feminist bookstore, is now faced with bankruptcy. Then, just as Wanda decides to leave Sara, Wanda's new young lover, Cindy, is murdered at the hands of her former husband. The woman with whom Cindy had been living was injured by the attacker. Three women in a close-knit lesbian community are faced with tremendous sorrow and stress.