In a sparse style that has been compared to Hemingway,[2] Hale's work often explored issues of Native American identity and discusses poverty, abuse, and the condition of women in society.
She also wrote The Owl's Song (1974), The Jailing of Cecelia Capture (which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1985), Women on the Run (1999), and Custer Lives in Humboldt County & Other Poems (1978).
Hale attended high school in Wapato, Washington, before transferring to the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
[7] She contributed the poems "Red Eagle" and "Nespelim Man (a song)" to The Whispering Wind: poetry by young American Indians,[8] in 1972.
In 1974, she published The Owl's Song,[9] a book for young adults telling the story of fourteen year old Billy White Hawk, who leaves his alcoholic father and moves from an Idaho reservation to live with his sister in California.