As a young poet in the 1940s. Elizabeth Brewster wrote in an almost desperate attempt to order the chaos of her own psyche. Even then, she possessed the artistry to distance and objectify her own internal struggle by transferring it to the people and landscape of semirural New Brunswick where her childhood and adolescence were spent. Today, some forty years later, she has come to terms with herself, but the process of ordering still continues. Her current poetry is largely concerned with the spirit of place in western Canada. Having determined who she is, Brewster is now attempting to establish her proper home.

This twofold quest--first to establish identity, and second to place that identity within the context of a kaleidoscopic society--indicates that Brewster is answering creatively two of the greatest challenges that the twentieth century poses. Her prose is identical in its aims to her poetry, and...