Finalist, Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction

A deeply affecting portrait of a long partnership and a clear-eyed account of the impact of a serious illness, writing as consolation, and the enduring significance of poetry from one of Canada's most celebrated voices.

When we ran off together in 1978, abandoning our marriages and leaving wreckage in our wake, I was a promising writer, Patrick had just won the Governor General's Award. I was so happy for him, and I've continued to be every time an honour comes his way, but I knew if I didn't grow, if I remained merely someone who showed potential, we wouldn't last. I swore I wouldn't play the dutiful wife, cheerleader, and muse of the great male writer, and he didn't envision a partner like that. We aspired to flourish together and thrive in words and books and gardens.

When Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane met at a poetry workshop in 1976, they had no idea that they would go on to write more than forty books between them, balancing their careers with their devotion to each other, and to their beloved cats, for decades. Then, in January 2017, their life together changed unexpectedly when Patrick became seriously ill. Despite tests and the opinions of many specialists, doctors remained baffled. There was no diagnosis and no effective treatment plan. The illness devastated them both.

During this time, Lorna turned to her writing as a way of making sense of her grief and for consolation. She revisited her poems, tracing her own path as a poet along with the evolution of her relationship with Patrick. The result is an intimate and intensely moving memoir about the difficulties and joys of creating a life with someone and the risks and immense rewards of partnership. At once a spirited account of the past and a poignant reckoning with the present, it is, above all, an extraordinary and unforgettable love story.

Told with unflinching honesty and fierce tenderness, Through the Garden is a candid, clear-eyed portrait of a long partnership and an acknowledgement, a tribute, and a gift.
About the Author: LORNA CROZIER is the author of the memoir Through the Garden, a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction. She has published eighteen books of poetry, including God of Shadows, What the Soul Doesn't Want, The Wrong Cat, Small Mechanics, The Blue Hour of the Day: Selected Poems, and Whetstone. She is also the author of The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things and the memoir Small Beneath the Sky, which won the Hubert Evans Award for Creative Nonfiction. She won the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry for Inventing the Hawk and three additional collections were finalists for the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry. She has received the Canadian Authors Association Award, three Pat Lowther Memorial Awards, the Raymond Souster Award, and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She was awarded the BC Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence and the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. She is a Professor Emerita at the University of Victoria and an Officer of the Order of Canada, and she has received five honorary doctorates for her contributions to Canadian literature. Born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, she now lives in British Columbia.