Gwethalyn Graham (January 18, 1913 – November 25, 1965) was a Canadian writer and activist, whose 1944 novel Earth and High Heaven was the first Canadian book to reach number one on the New York Times Best Seller list.["Gwethalyn Graham: Two fiction awards won by Montrealer". The Globe and Mail, November 26, 1965.] Graham won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction twice, for her first novel Swiss Sonata in 1938,["Honors for Canadian Writers". The Globe and Mail, April 29, 1939.] and for Earth and High Heaven in 1944.[
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Background
She was born Gwethalyn Graham Erichsen-Brown, to wealthy Toronto parents. Her father was a lawyer. At 19, she was a student at Smith College in Massachusetts, but dropped out and eloped with John McNaught, the son of her father's business partner.[ They divorced after two years, and Graham moved to the city of Westmount on the island of Montreal, where she became a close friend and associate of Hugh MacLennan, F. R. Scott, Thérèse Casgrain and Pierre Trudeau. Graham subsequently married David Yalden-Thomson, a philosophy professor at McGill University; they subsequently also divorced.][
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Graham's sister, Isabel LeBourdais, was a journalist whose 1966 book The Trial of Steven Truscott played a key role in disputing the evidence that led to Steven Truscott's controversial murder conviction,["Isabel LeBourdais 1909–2003: Her book said Truscott trial wrong". The Globe and Mail, April 14, 2003.] and her brother John Erichsen-Brown was a diplomat with the Canadian Department of External Affairs.["Erichsen-Brown Goes to Belgium As Counsellor". The Globe and Mail, August 20, 1953.]
Career
She wrote two abandoned early novels[ before completing Swiss Sonata, which was published in 1938.]["A Toronto Girl in Switzerland". The Globe and Mail, March 19, 1938.]
Graham was also an outspoken activist against anti-Semitism and anti-French Canadian discrimination;["Novel No Tract: Fair Play For Jews Demanded". The Globe and Mail, October 3, 1944.] Earth and High Heaven depicted an interfaith romance between a Protestant woman from Montreal and a Jewish man from Northern Ontario.["Canadian Novel Challenges Montreal's Race Prejudice". The Globe and Mail, October 7, 1944.] The novel was optioned by Samuel Goldwyn for a film that was to star Katharine Hepburn;["Toronto Novelist Sells Film Rights for $100,000". The Globe and Mail, September 2, 1944.] however, the film was never made, as Goldwyn abandoned the project after the similarly themed Gentleman's Agreement came out while Earth and High Heaven was still in development.[
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Graham's only published book after Earth and High Heaven was Dear Enemies, a non-fiction collection of her correspondence with journalist Solange Chaput-Rolland about English-French relations in Canada.[ She had postponed her planned third novel to work on the book.][ She also wrote a theatrical play, Trouble at Weti,]["2 Novels by Canadians Due Soon on Broadway". The Globe and Mail, January 7, 1950.] and radio plays for CBC Radio,[ and translated works by writers from Quebec, most notably André Laurendeau's play Two Terrible Women (Deux femmes terribles), into English.][
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Graham died in 1965 of an undiagnosed brain tumour, aged 52.[ Her illness and death resulted in the cancellation of a planned sequel to Dear Enemies.][
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Both Swiss Sonata and Earth and High Heaven were reissued by Cormorant Books in 2004.["Romeo and Juliet in Westmount". The Globe and Mail, March 13, 2004.] Graham is the subject of a biography, Gwethalyn Graham: a Liberated Woman in a Conventional Age, by Barbara Meadowcroft (Toronto: Women's Press, 2008).
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