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. Graham won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction twice, for her first novel Swiss Sonata in 1938, and for Earth and High Heaven in 1944. and her brother John Erichsen-Brown was a diplomat with the Canadian Department of External Affairs.
Career
She wrote two abandoned early novels
Graham 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; 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. and radio plays for CBC Radio, Graham is the subject of a biography, Gwethalyn Graham: a Liberated Woman in a Conventional Age, by Barbara Meadowcroft (Toronto: Women's Press, 2008).