Earth and High Heaven

by Gwethalyn Graham

Earth and High Heaven is, simply, a drama of human relationships -- of two people in love who are confronted by the obstacle of racial intolerance -- presented with such cutting truth, such fidelity to life, such compassion and understanding, that their problem becomes, indelibly, the reader's own. With rare perceptiveness, Gwethalyn Graham takes the reader into the lives of Erica Drake and Marc Reiser, whose two worlds are separated by families and conventions. Here is the story of a man and woman who dared earth and high heaven to make their vision real.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Romance, Historical Fiction, Canada, Historical Romance, Canadian Literature

326 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Gwethalyn Graham was a Canadian writer, 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 won the Governor General's Award twice, for her first novel Swiss Sonata in 1938 and for Earth And High Heaven in 1944.

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 and Gwethalyn 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. Gwethalyn subsequently married David Yalden-Thomson, a philosophy professor at McGill University; they divorced.

Gwethalyn was also an outspoken activist against anti-Semitism and anti-French Canadian discrimination; Earth And High Heaven depicted an interfaith romance between a Protestant woman from Montreal and a Jewish man from Northern Ontario. The novel was optioned by Samuel Goldwyn for a film that was to star Katharine Hepburn but the film was not made.

Gwethalyn died in 1965 of an undiagnosed brain tumour, aged 52.

Reviews

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will almost certainly be on my books of the year list – a book I couldn’t stop reading but didn’t want to finish. It’s hard to convey in a review just how lovely this book is, you may just need to read it. There is something about Gwethalyn Graham’s story-telling, the way in which she creates relationships, the emotional and upsetting nature of the divisions that she portrays which makes this novel so compelling.

I hadn’t heard of Gwethalyn Graham before Persephone re-issued this novel, a Canadian writer who published one other earlier novel before this. Earth and High Heaven was an enormous success remaining on the New York Times bestseller list for thirty-eight weeks. First published in 1944 – those first readers could not have known whether the happy ending that is implicit in the novel’s opening sentence would be replicated for the allies.

Gwethalyn Graham explores the divisions and deeply entrenched prejudices which existed in Canadian society, through the story of Erica Drake and Marc Reiser who meet and fall in love. Set in Montreal during World War Two – Graham shows us how society was divided into three distinct groups.

“Hampered by racial-religious distinctions to start with, relations between the French, English and Jews of Montreal are still further complicated by the fact that all three groups suffer from an inferiority complex – the French because they are a minority in Canada, the English because they are a minority in Quebec, and the Jews because they are a minority everywhere.”

Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2017/...

[Tania · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ended up putting everything on hold to finish this book, it was such a page turner, I just had to find out how it was all going to end.

[Susann · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite Persephone books. Set in 1942 Montreal, it tells the story of a Jewish man and a Gentile woman falling in love. I can see why it was a bestseller in its day; I couldn't put it down. The characters are so real. Graham brings them to life with all her surrounding details and natural dialogue. The newsroom scenes were perfect for showing the full picture of Erica. And Erica's getting woke scenes are just as fresh today:
"She had counted too much on the fact that her prejudices were relatively mild and her preconceived ideas largely unstated."

My favorite moments were Erica and Marc together, discovering that unique delight that comes only with finding the right one.

The above makes the novel seem like a sweet love story, but Montreal is not immune from anti-Semitism and Erica's parents are prejudice incarnate.

The preface mentions that Samuel Goldwyn bought the movie rights and planned to cast Katherine Hepburn and Gregory Peck. Hepburn is the obvious choice, given Erica's smarts and strong principles, but I kept envisioning Jean Arthur or maybe even Barbara Stanwyck. Peck isn't quite right, either. Maybe an early 2000s Adrian Brody.

[Emily May · Rating 4 out of 5]

But it was not to be changed; the pattern had already been designed and laid out, and none of them could change it.

In simple terms, Earth and High Heaven is a love story, set in 1940s Canada, between the Jewish Marc Reiser and gentile Erica Drake. But, of course, this is a Persephone book, so it is also a subtle (and not-so-subtle) meditation on the politics of its era— human beings as categories, women's rights, and the insidious antisemitism present even amongst people who claimed to be horrified by Hitler and the Nazis.

The Drake family hold a number of progressive beliefs, yet they are unable to shake off their prejudices when Erica falls for a Jewish man. Erica, herself, is forced to challenge the stereotypes she didn't even realise she believed in until now. A huge part of her narrative features a deconstruction of human categories— she concludes how ludicrous it is to see people as Jews, or whatever, and not as individuals.

Though, I should add, Graham does not appear to be entirely against what we'd probably call "identity politics", as, during Marc's perspective, she portrays being Jewish as an integral part of his identity. Though neither religious, nor, he notes, ethnically tied to all Jews, Marc identifies strongly with being a Jew and refuses to relinquish this part of himself.

What I liked least about the book was how Marc several times dismisses what Erica tells him out of a belief that he knows better than she does. It is eventually called out, but still his chauvinism prevented me from ever really loving them as a couple.

[Mela · Rating 5 out of 5]

A precious, deep, original love story.

A thorough study of the situation when two people from different spheres, classes, etc. fall in love.

A priceless analysis of prejudice (more specifically antisemitism) in a society one would have thought was too civilized to have such prejudice.

"You see, the trouble with me is that I'm just like everybody else—I don't realize what something really means until it suddenly walks up and hits me between the eyes. I can be quite convinced intellectually that a situation is wrong, but it's still an academic question which doesn't really affect me personally, until, for some reason or other, it starts corning at me through my emotions as well. It isn't enough to think, you have to feel. . . ."

Now it occurred to her that her chief problem was not her opinions, which were conscious and had already changed considerably, but the way in which she thought and by which she had arrived at those opinions, which was still largely unconscious. There is nothing in the education of the average non-scientific human being to discourage him from the habit of generalizing from little or no evidence, and worse still and far more important, nothing to discourage him from the habit of starting with a generalization and ending up with the individual, instead of the other way round. That was precisely what she herself had done when she had tried to visualize David Reiser through a miasma of vague impressions associated with the word "Jewish" even though his religion or his race or whatever it was that the adjective actually meant, happened to be entirely irrelevant.

And an interesting view of two generations (at the time of IIWW), those who were already adults during IWW and those who were too young to remember it.

A gem worth reading and thinking through. Sadly we have to still think about it. Discriminated groups are changing, but the problem remains.

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marc Reiser and Erica Drake meet at a party in Quebec in 1942. He is a Jewish lawyer. She is a Gentile journalist. They both feel a strong bond almost at once, but when she tries to introduce him to her father, Marc is snubbed by the older man who doesn't want his daughter "mixed up with a Jew", and things only get worse from there.

This is a romance at heart, but a serious one that deeply explores the bond between two people. The only fault I would find with it is that Marc and Erica are a little too good to be true.

I had no idea there was so much antisemitism outside of fascist countries during the Second World War. It's not only antisemitism, either. Charles Drake was almost equally horrified by the idea of his son marrying a French-Canadian Catholic until he realised it was inevitable. It sounds as if the social groups hardly mixed, except at work.

[gabrielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

normal people for canadians

[Samantha Glasser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah love! This is the story of Erica Drake, a wealthy girl from a good family who rebelled and became a newspaper reporter, and Marc Reiser, a Jewish attorney who has endured many discriminations in his life due to his heritage. They very simply met and fell in love at a party.

Of course some people have objections to their being together. The breakdown of the relationship between Erica and her father Charles is beautifully illustrated. Anyone who has had a falling out with a parent can relate.

"'You haven't any idea how much you've changed in the past three months...'
'It doesn't do to lose all your illusions at once, does it?... I was so full of illusions that really, I must have been quite a spectacle.'
'I liked you better that way, Eric,' he said under his breath.
'I liked you better too.'"

This book is more about the romance than prejudice, but the writing is excellent and makes it more memorable than the average love story. The novel spent time on the New York Times best-seller list but today it is largely forgotten.

“Any stand he took with them was likely to be largely emotional, and to counter emotion with logic was useless...”

"...Arguing with them was like arguing with someone in a nightmare, or arguing geography with a man who's been brought up to believe that the earth is square. They'd been so consistently misinformed on every subject for so long that there was no common ground for discussion at all. It was hopeless. Every time you produced a fact, they produced a contrary fact, and neither of you could advance an inch."

"You're too bloody fatalistic. What you need is a little simple faith in your fellow men, a dash of optimism, a couple of illusions, and a lot more self-confidence. You've got everything else, and if someone like you can't break it down, then no one can. At least you can try-- God damn it... it's your duty to try!"

"Change was to Erica the only permanent condition of life... The more you could learn to do without, the safer you were; security consisted in traveling light and staking your happiness on a few fundamentals of a non-material nature which could not, or at least were unlikely to be taken away from you."

I bought a copy of this book online thinking it had a dust jacket. It came without one and I was disappointed. I always try to get used books with their jackets whenever possible. But the romantic writing and the feel of the softened pages and the fabric-wrapped boards won me over and now I'm happy I got the book I got. Isn't it funny how reading a specific book because of its smell and texture can make you feel like you've become friends?

[Carole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second time that I have read this book. The first time was about 40 years ago. It had a big impact on me then and it was no less powerful this time around. It was first published in 1944 and was a long-running NY Times bestseller and a winner of several literary awards including the Governor General’s Award for Fiction in Canada that year.

The story takes place in Montreal in 1942 and revolves around the relationship between Erica Drake, a Westmount WASP, and Marc Reiser, a Canadian-born Jewish lawyer who has enlisted in the army and is about to be shipped overseas. Although they seem to be a perfect match in every way, their love is threatened by the prejudice that they encounter from both families and within the community.

Some people might think that this novel is dated. However, if that is because it is set in Montreal during World War II, then every novel that is set in a particular time and place is dated. Graham unflinchingly presents the blatant anti-Semitism that was systemic in Canada at that time: hotels and apartment buildings that did not admit Jews, universities that had a quota system with a very limited number of places for Jewish students, athletic and social clubs that had “select members” only. Her presentation of this discrimination was considered very controversial at the time because it was still happening when she wrote about it. Although our society has become much more inclusive almost 70 years later, that does not mean that a book written about that era is dated. This is a very real part of our history.

In addition to the serious issues of xenophobia and racism that Gwethalyn Graham probes with great thoughtfulness and reflection, "Earth and High Heaven" is a real page-turner and a very enjoyable read.

[Liina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a classic Persephone novel - quiet but intelligent and with a strong atmosphere of the era. In this case Canada in the 1940s. It is about a Canadian woman and a Jewish man who fall in love and have to overcome the obstacles of society and their families, to be together. A quite worn plot, here anti-Semitism is the main thing that is keeping the lovers apart.
It was quite nicely written, perhaps about 75 pages too long. I especially loved the dialogue. I found it very believable and smart. Especially the female lead, Erica, was witty and without any illusions - a strong, rather independent character. Such female leads are always a joy to read. Despite the solid writing and characters, it took me weeks to finish it. It just didn't have any tension or narrative arc to keep me interested. I do love novels without a plot but then the writing has to be purely brilliant to carry it off. In this case, it was okay but not good enough to read for the pleasure that stylistically good writing alone brings.
So Earth and High Heaven is a bit like a stylish woman in just the right suit, with just the right perfume saying just the right things - that altogether make her a tad bit boring.

[Will Ansbacher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Needs to be read in context of the 1930’s and 40’s when it was groundbreaking, apparently. Now it is a rather (actually, very) predictable love story between a Jew and a Montreal WASP. All the twists and arguments seem a bit forced however, they are there to carry the message that G wanted to present - that is, to show how prejudiced Canadian society was towards Jews. All very worthy, but the writing itself is not good enough to compensate.

[M F · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I were living in Montreal in 1944, I would have wanted to be Gwethalyn Graham’s friend. She was intelligent and empathetic, and our politics would probably have aligned. She’d have been fun to drink beer with, too; I wish she had been around when I was at grad school. Earth and High Heaven won the Governor General’s award in 1944 (her second in six years), and, look, the award-winners, to this point, have ranged from mediocre to embarrassing, so it’s to Graham’s credit that both of hers are closer to the former than the latter. Still, though this is not a terrible novel, I truly hope I never have to read another one of her books again.

Earth and High Heaven was popular with more than just the wartime Canadian literati, though: it was the first Canadian book to become a massive, crossover hit in America, topping the NYT bestsellers list and staying on it for a year or so, eventually selling over a hundred thousand copies. For a Canadian novel in 1944, that was a Big Deal (and still would be today). It also, apparently, nearly got made into a Hollywood blockbuster with Katharine Hepburn in the lead role. It was, essentially, The Notebook of 1944. I’d like to think that it won the hearts of the public through its candid exposure of anti-Semitism in Montreal’s upper class or its subtle critique of patriarchy, but I know the truth is that it was all about the love story. It’s always about the love story.

However, the love story is… not great, nor is the rest of the novel much better. I can’t make fun of the book as much as I would like, because it’s also a social reform novel with clear eyes and a good (if not full) heart, but there’s a lot to dislike. Graham’s got one of those moderately elegant, excessively polite styles that is entirely devoid of character; I can actually feel the composition courses at her Swiss boarding school emanating from her prose. And though Graham is a feminist, she loves, unironically, to have men address women with such delightful epithets as “dear child.” Even Nora in A Doll’s House knew that was fucked up, and that was in 1879. Similarly, though the novel’s main theme is that generalizations cannot help us understand individuals, Graham has no problem offering such pithy assessments as “he was unshakably decent, honest, hard-working, and unimaginative. He was a typical Canadian” (172). And when she says that “small towns are more democratic than big cities,” it’s pretty clear that she hasn’t spent much time in small towns.

Mostly, though, the issue with Earth and High Heaven is that it’s less a novel than a platform for ideas. The novel’s protagonist, Erica Drake, is—like Vicky from Swiss Sonata—a headstrong, critical-minded, Unconventional Woman (though, weirdly, her only real goal in life is to get married). At the beginning of the novel, we’re told that, after taking a job as a journalist, she “dropped, overnight, from the class which is written about to the class which does the writing” and that, after becoming the editor of the Woman’s Section of the Montreal Post, she “ceased to be one of the Drakes of Westmount and was simply Erica Drake of the Post” (12). Thus detached from the values and prejudices of Montreal’s jet set yet possessed of its inherent privileges (mobility, economic freedom, education), Erica becomes the vehicle for Graham’s progressive social philosophy. She meets Marc Reiser, a Jewish lawyer from Ontario, at a party at her parents’ house early in the novel, and the two quickly fall in love. The problem: her parents disapprove of the match because it would be decidedly awkward having to introduce their Jewish son-in-law to their friends at the club. From the beginning, then, Erica and Marc’s love affair seems star-crossed, and Graham uses the familial conflict to espouse her theories on the silliness of prejudice. While I’m definitely sympathetic to her aims, she tends to get so wrapped up in explaining why stereotypes are dumb that she loses sight of story and character. Between Erica’s interior monologue and dialogue, there must be at least forty-seven different versions of this: “That human beings, regardless of their own merit, should take upon themselves the right to judge a whole group of men, women and children, arbitrarily assembled according to a meaningless set of definitions, was evil enough; that there should not even be a judgment, was intolerable” (32). (Also, see that unnecessary comma between the noun phrase and its verb? It happens all the time in this book and it drives me fucking crazy.)

Though it’s not Atlas Shrugged, it does feel, at times, as though the novel’s characters exist more as embodiments of particular social values and positions rather than as authentic human beings, and this problem is exacerbated by the fact that Graham seems incapable of writing distinct voices for different characters. Everyone talks the same way, and the dialogue also sounds exactly like the narration, and things sometimes get really confusing because Graham writes in third-person omniscient, sporadically shifting from Erica’s POV, through which about ninety percent of the novel is focalized, to other characters’ POVs. Several times, I thought something like “why the hell is Erica thinking about Marc as though she doesn’t know him” only to realize that Graham had suddenly narrative-incepted Erica’s sister, Mimi, or her father, Charles, without making any changes to her voice or style to mark the shift in POV. This is not some kind of late-modernist commentary on the homogenizing effects of wartime capitalism; it’s just shitty writing. So, too, are the moments where characters seem to be providing exposition of the scenes they are currently involved in, as in this delightful exclamation from Marc: “What a weird conversation for two people sitting on a park bench who’ve only met once before for half an hour!” (83) Thanks, Marc. I totally wouldn’t have picked up on that otherwise. Sometimes, the characters themselves seem to lose sight of the plot, as in my personal favourite moment, a beautiful non sequitur where Marc and Erica are having a heated discussion about her racist family, their crumbling love, and the general doom that seems to be hanging over their future, when Graham abruptly decides, in the middle of a heartfelt explanation of what it’s like to experience anti-Semitism, that it’s time for Marc to offer Erica a biscuit. It’s a hell of a juxtaposition: “Maybe it’s just because they’ve been brought up to regard Jews as different. Do you want a biscuit?” She accepts: “Yes, please. … One of the chocolate ones.” He hands her two, and he immediately resumes his impassioned discourse on racism, as though the biscuits didn’t happen. Truly wonderful stuff, like the flower shop scene in The Room.

The novel does do some good things. There are a couple memorable lines, such as when Miriam, arguing with her petulant father, Charles, admonishes him, “If you choose to turn your back, Charles, you can hardly complain about what goes on behind it” (220). I also like Graham’s metaphor for an unhappy marriage, which she represents as ending up “on the wrong side of the living room” (246)—as in, two people sitting on opposing sides of the room in their domestic space because they don’t want to have anything to so with one another. Graham was also ahead of her time when it comes to thinking about how things like microaggressions make some people’s daily reality a grind. Erica and Marc’s first conversation, for instance, results in what might be the earliest example of a satirical “but where are you really from??” as Marc makes fun of Erica for immediately prying into his ancestry (“Where were your parents born?”) after he tells her he was born in Manchester, Ontario: “You remind me of the man named Cohen who changed his name to O’Brien and then wanted to change it to Smith, and when the judge asked him why, he said, ‘Because people are always wanting to know what my name was before’” (26). This is not the only time Erica is forced to confront implicit biases; after feeling cognitive dissonance when Marc’s brother, David, doesn’t fit her preconceived notions, she scolds herself: “Evidently it was not going to be anything like as easy as she had thought; you could not rid yourself of layer upon layer of prejudice and preconceived ideas all in one moment and by one overwhelming effort of will. During the past three weeks she had become conscious of her own reactions, but that was as far as she had got. The reactions themselves remained to be dealt with” (81). Graham’s social philosophizing is also fairly insightful, particularly by the literary standards of the time. While many of her contemporaries couldn’t get much further than “racism is bad” or “poverty is hard” (thinking of you, Little Man), Graham actually delves more deeply into where racism comes from and how it impacts the people on all sides of it.

Still, the novel’s thoughtfulness about racism is not nearly enough to save it from its various flaws, including an ending that is, frankly, bafflingly conventional, hinging upon a deus ex machina whose consequences completely undermine all of the character work Graham has done to that point. It’s depressing to think that, in 1944 in the U.S., Tennessee Williams was writing The Glass Menagerie, and Earth and High Heaven was the thing making Canadian critics swoon. I haven’t looked ahead to the rest of the Governor General list, so, for all I know, there’s another Gwethalyn Graham waiting for me somewhere around 1950, but, for now, I’m just going to jam my fingers into my ears, yelling “no no no no no nono,” and pretend that Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes is going to kick off the era of high art in Canadian lit.

[Kryptonian Fletch · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best novels I have ever read

[Debby Binns · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorite Persephone books. Set in 1942 Montreal, it tells the story of a Jewish man and a Gentile woman falling in love. I can see why it was a bestseller in its day; I couldn't put it down. The characters are so real. Some of the writing is slightly outdated and a few of the chapters could have been better edited but on the whole this was a great read.

[Marie Saville · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coup de coeur ❤

[Rikki Maccuish · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's almost hard to say this book is a stereotypical book about prejudice and stereotypes because as a millennial I don't and can't pretend to understand the value differences in the early 1900's, but I wasn't blown away by the topic. What I really enjoyed was the true descriptions and insight the author gave regarding Canada. The characters are well developed and the love story was very cinematic. My favourite quote from the book was, "Manchester itself is a tribute to the Canadian talent for choosing a remarkably fine natural setting for a town, and then proceeding to ruin it as far as possible." Besides Montreal, in which the story takes place, ths is mostly true!

Beautiful story that provides an argument for the need to make change instead of wait for others to make it for you. Empowering, insightful and well-written. I couldn't put it down.

[Elisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

~real review pending~

All I'll say at the moment is that this was a fantastic book. Set in 1942 during the height of the Nazi regime when the rest of the world was getting really nervous, we meet Erica Drake and Marc Rieser. Marc, of Jewish descent, and Erica, of notable gentry, fall in love much to the consternation of her family. Throughout we watch Erica learn the true meaning of prejudice and fight tooth and nail for what she believes in.

For anyone who thinks Canada has a perfect, squeaky clean record, this book will set you straight. From French-Catholic hate to anti-Semitism, Canada has a record just as bad as any other country. At least we learned.

[Annalisa]

Read of this Canadian writer in the biography of Mordecai Richler. This was a book that made a splash when Richler was school age, although he was supposedly unaware of it. A story of forbidden love between an anglo protestant woman and jewish man during WWII montreal. Racist times indeed and a real page turner, if a bit plodding at times with the focus on the inner thoughts of the characters.

[Kaylee Harkness · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm told this is a very popular and important novel. I could barely get through it.

[Chrystal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dullsville. Boring characters droning on and on. Why did I waste my time on such drivel...I am rarely disappointed with Persephone; they must be running out of material.

1.5 stars

[Isabelle Sim · Rating 5 out of 5]

the plot is honestly quite sparse and i could see it feeling like a hollow conclusion but the writing was excellent to the point that it never felt like a drag! there’s just so much going on in the background, and everyone has very sensible and also painful musings about life. i seldom think this but i did think a lot of characters heavily resembled people i actually knew! a very lovely read even though the first para already tells the whole story

[Dave Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not typically my go to genre (romance, and in this case a contemporary romance to a historical setting not my own). But the prose grabbed me out of the gate and never let go.

Particularly absorbing were the characters, filled as they were with nuance and complexity while never betraying that sense of raw, unfiltered dialouge running underneath. It subtly keeps adding natural layers as it goes, giving it the sense of getting to know these strangers on a level befitting friendship. There's the Canadian context. There is the context of the war. There is the socio-political dynamics of the three central povs- jew, gentile, and french. The way the author brings these dynamics to the surface as a unique exploration of a specific place and time is impressive, and the insight it gives to all three of these dynamics carrying their own sense of isolation in contemporary Montreal was fascinating.

Most important- its a good story. Its entertaining and engaging and meaningful, the perfect balance of crowd pleaser and substance where you can have fun cheering for particular outcomes while growing in the process.

[Sabrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED THIS BOOK! It really captured so many feelings of being anglophone in Quebec as well as being a second generation immigrant in Canada. It really highlighted tense feelings of Canadian politics during the Second World War but accomplished this through romance story-telling. How great is that?! I love how this complex topic of Canada's acceptance and tolerance of immigrants (Jews especially) was told through a romance because not only did that make you as a reader want the couple to succeed, it also made you think about the truth of Canada as a "welcoming and multicultural nation". There were so many moments that highlighted female excellence. The main character of Erica is constantly trying to break through the mold that has been set for her; not only through her defying what she sees as "femininity" but also through her relationship with Marc Reiser.
Not only was this story just fantastic, it was also beautifully told. The writing was absolutely gorgeous. I loved all the descriptions and the inner thoughts of the characters sprinkled throughout the novel.
Ultimately, despite the fact that this book came out in 1944, I believe that it is still relevant and extremely enjoyable! After all, it didn't win the Governor General's Literary Award for nothing! I would recommend it to everyone!

[Wendy Greenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this Canadian book (first published in 1944) gave me a whole new perspective on period Canadian society and its ingrained anti-semitism. I had made unmitigated assumptions about wartime Canada without any knowledge of its “none is too many” policy toward Jews fleeing war-torn Europe.

This is a multi-perspective take on this one issue. Upper crust society can make sweeping liberal statements until it comes to one of their own. Signage in hotels, restaurants (and similar) displayed notices demonstrating that Jewish patrons were not welcome. Many industries did not hire Jews; universities discriminated against them. Jewish doctors could not get hospital appointments. There were no Jewish judges, and Jewish lawyers were excluded from most firms. There were scarcely any Jewish teachers, and Jewish nurses, engineers and architects had to hide their identity to find jobs in their fields.

Into this comes the love between top drawer Erica Drake and Jewish lawyer Marc Reiser. Erica slowly uncovers the depth of discrimination and prejudice that is displayed to Jews and consequently that affect her as her awareness is heightened. Erica is horrified and Marc tries to protect her.

This must have been a very brazen novel on publication and even today is a shocking expose on a society that I had always thought was so tolerant of difference.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a period piece. Set in Montreal in 1942 there are three distinct groups in society -- English protestants, French Catholics and Jews. The English and French are just started to intermarry but Gentile-Jew unions are still seriously frowned upon. This is the story of a young woman from an upper class WASP family falling in love with a young Jewish lawyer and it was a very important book in it's time but was so period specific that it went out of print for twenty years even though it won Canada's ultimate literary award in 1944. It is reminiscent of the movie "Guess Who's Coming Dinner" which was an Academy Award winner in 1967 and also a big sensation for a short period of time. The movie starring the suave Sidney Portier and the renowned Tracy and Hepburn, tells the story of a white woman who is engaged to a black man and brings him home to meet her parents. It is heartening that these two stories are now out-dated relicts of the recent past. Maybe we are making progress as a society after all.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Graham wrote this book in 1944 and won the Governor General's award for it. I read it as a teenager and reread it now for book club. It still is a powerful read. The story is set in 1942 Montreal. You have 3 distinct groups of people - Protestant Gentiles, Catholic French Canadians and Jews. This is a story of a gentile girl from a prominent Montreal family falling in love with a Northern Ontario Jewish lawyer. Canada was fighting Nazism and the anti-antisemitism found in Europe and yet antisemitism was alive in Canada. Erica and Marc's families both are against their love and the book explores this dilemma. Sometimes the story gets weighted down with the dialogue exploring this theme. I think the theme is still relevant today. So often we generalize about a race or culture and to break down those barriers we need to meet the individual to see that they are a human being and not a monster.

[Jann · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story details the romance of Erica, a young woman of 28 who still lives with her upper-class, Protestant family in Westmount although she works as an editor for a newspaper. She is fairly knowledgeable about world affairs as the book is set in the early 1940 era and several people she knows are already overseas due to WWII.

At a cocktail party given at her parents' home, one of her male friends brings a Jewish friend of his and introduces him to Erica. She finds herself very drawn to him and is shocked when her father won't even let her introduce them.

This is the start of a major campaign by her parents to discourage her from continuing to see him and eventually fall in love with him.

[Dasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gwethalyn Graham, born a year before the outbreak of the First World War, wrote and published Earth and High Heaven during the midst of the Second World War. The book reflects her values as an ardent activist against anti-Semitism and anti-French Catholic narratives that were prominent at the time of war. Though some could discount Earth and High Heaven as merely a new take on the classic Romeo and Juliet love story, where Romeo is a Jewish man from Northern Ontario and Juliet is an English Protestant from a wealthy Montreal family, that simplification would be a disservice to the political, religious and social narratives as Graham experienced them during the war that Graham is able to explain through this compelling love story.

[Isabelle Gelzhiser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a beautiful book. It left me as full of love, hope, and satisfaction as reading pride and prejudice had. And even more than Jane Austin's book, the chemistry between the two protagonists, from their dialogue to their way of thinking, had me entranced. Even more so, Graham uses her characters to make quite a bit of political commentary, one that is applicable to even now and gave me a lot of insight into Canadian history.

Could not recommend this book more, all her characters are so beautifully drawn, you will fall in love with this book within the first 20 pages. This will definitely be one of my all time favorites.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read! A historical fiction released in 1944 and set in Montreal, Canada during the first years of the second world war. A love story which opened my eyes to how the Jews in Canada were perceived as Hitler's Nazi's eliminated them in the European death camps. The book also speaks of the prejudice between French Canadian Catholics and English Protestants. Definitely would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction. (I didn't read it in one day...just forgot to enter that I had started it. Took me seven days to read.