Description

George Stanley Godwin, a somewhat eccentric writer, lawyer and romantic, suffered an unhappy schooling in an English public school. An exciting period in pre-war Dresden preceded a decision to homestead in the Fraser Valley in British Columbia. Godwin and his bride struggled and failed in their endeavours. Returning to Europe he joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force that led to the trenches of Vimy in the Great War. Invalided with tuberculosis he spent a year in a sanatorium in the interior of British Columbia, met and fell in love with a young occupational therapist. Married with two young children he returned to England, to his wife and a life as a less than successful lawyer but a prolific writer. An intense romantic, his writings told of a varied and sometimes troubled life, though with an understanding of the world about him far ahead of his time. Godwin wrote twenty-one books, two of which were brought back into print in the 1990s. These are autobiographical novels. One tells of his struggles as a homesteader and his views of life and politics in the developing British Columbia. The other book is a compelling and vivid description of the Great War and its psychological and physical horrors. A prodigious writer, many of his books are written in the third person and yet contain his very personal views, which, along with his journal and correspondence to his young love, allow the story of his life and writings to be followed.