Pattern of Genes examines a life well lived, full of humour and character, but filled also with inescapable losses. These intense-ly intimate poems take us from the poet’s childhood in Winnipeg in the Second World War through her experiences as a Wren in the Royal Canadian Navy and as a traveller. There is a spirit of adventure and romance in her work, a vivid sense of time and place, but there is also a pervading elegiac tone as she copes with bereavement and loneliness.