Novel
Earth and High Heaven
Gwethalyn Graham · 1944
Synopsis
Montreal, June 1942. Erica Drake, twenty-eight, runs the women's page of a daily newspaper and belongs to the Drakes of Westmount, an old Protestant family that the Depression has eroded. At a cocktail party given by her family, she meets Marc Reiser, a thirty-three-year-old Jewish lawyer from a small town in northern Ontario, an officer awaiting posting overseas. Her father refuses to have him introduced to him. Erica sets out to change his mind, and discovers what her family really thinks.
Context
The novel appeared in 1944 from Lippincott, in Philadelphia. It names outright what the families of the hill thought of Jews, at a time when the country was at war with Germany, and the heroine tells her father that Canadians are not fundamentally at odds with the Nazis on that score, they simply find them excessive. Samuel Goldwyn bought the adaptation rights for a hundred thousand dollars; no film was made. A French translation appeared in Paris in 1946.
Who it is for
A novel in a clear, direct language, which assumes you know what Westmount and the Anglo-Protestant bourgeoisie of Montreal were.
Prizes and reception
Governor General's Award in 1944, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award the following year, and the first Canadian novel to top the New York Times bestseller list, where it stayed for thirty-seven weeks.
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