For most of the past thirty-five years Grace Irwin has combined a full-time professional life as teacher and pastor with the steady production of Christian novels and biographies. She combines deep conviction with common sense and competent writing. While not in the mainstream of Canadian literature, she has been a popular writer among evangelicals.

Irwin was born in Toronto, the youngest of five children of John and Martha Fortune Irwin. Her father was a Methodist lay preacher, an immigrant from Northern Ireland who became a member of the Toronto Morality Department. His forced demotion (over the issue of theater policing) led to straitened circumstances for the family, and his sense of failure precipitated his death at age sixty-five when Irwin was ten. Despite her youth, Irwin was deeply influenced by her affection and respect for her father. She has suggested that this attachment has contributed to her unmarried...