This illustrated biography highlights three pivotal phases in Gabrielle Roy's life and development as an author: her first twenty-seven years, which were spent growing up with her family in Manitoba; her two-year stay in France and England, in the late 1930s; and her return from Europe to live in Montreal. It was in this last period that Roy honed her craft and, through her travels across the country, learned about the Canada she came to describe in ways that altered the course of Canadian literature.