Irene Baird is an interesting and versatile writer, as her four very different novels testify. She is best known for her novel of social protest Waste Heritage (1939), which has been compared to John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath in subject matter, style, and tone. In the words of one commentator, Baird's 1939 novel is "a superb documentary--perceptive reporting from a dramatic era of history. It is also a work of art--an exciting, tightly-constructed novel."

Irene Todd Baird, daughter of Robert and Eva Todd, was born in 1901 in Carlisle, Cumberland County, England. She received her schooling there and in 1919 immigrated with her parents to Vancouver, British Columbia. Soon after she married Robert Baird and the couple settled in Vancouver, where their children, Robert and June, were born.

In Vancouver Baird began writing her first novel, John, which was published in 1937. It is a character study...