Surprise of My Life, The

Maybe you'd be intrigued by the progression of a life begun as an unexceptional little girl born to a middle-class, Jewish-Canadian couple in a small prairie town who, at age sixteen, married a cultured Englishman and survived the Great Depression, partly alone in a shack in the woods of Vancouver Island.

Or how, only a few months after returning to Vancouver, with no training and minimal education, this same young woman walked on stage at one of Canada's finest old theatres, and went on to a successful thirty-year career as an actress and radio dialogue writer, pausing along the way to divorce her first husband and marry John Drainie, the man who was to become Canada's most beloved actor, and, incidentally, father to her six children. And you're almost certain to be moved by the loving, sensitive (and sometimes humorous) way she narrates his two-year losing battle with cancer.

Claire Drainie Taylor ends her memoir with a brief glimpse of the outstanding Canadian film entrepreneur who became her third husband.