Gabrielle Roy: Creation and Memory introduces readers to the complex, driven, and sensitive woman from the small town of Saint-Boniface, Manitoba, who won the hearts and minds of readers everywhere with her first novel, Bonheur d'Occasion (translated as The Tin Flute). The authors draw upon considerable resources to explore those aspects of Roy's life that account for the scope of her writing. They also examine in detail the roots of some of the major themes that inform her works: from Canada's rich and endangered multicultural heritage, to the ambivalent roles of progress and politics. This illustrated biography highlights three pivotal phases in Gabrielle Roy's life: her early years growing up and then teaching in Manitoba; her two-year stay in France and England in the late 1930s; and her return from Europe to live in Quebec. It was in this last period that Roy honed her craft and then, as she travelled across the country, learned about the Canada she came to describe in ways that altered the course of literary history.