[6] Her first novel was Water Dancer, the tale of a long-distance swimmer recovering from a nervous breakdown, whose trainer and his wife both fall in love with her.
The New York Times noted that Levin involved her readers successfully in "an odd world", but criticized the characters' depth and the lack of resolution to their difficulties.
[9] In 1993 she produced The Sea of Light, which the Dallas Morning News called "beautiful and probing.
[11] Her fifth published book, Love and Death and Other Disasters, collected stories written over a period between 1977 and 1995.
[13] She has spoken several times of her experiences adopting as a single gay woman, from a country that does not formally allow foreign adoptions,[14] including in a 1995 volume Wanting a Child edited by Jill Bialosky and Helen Shulman.