**Vivid, evocative, moving, The Stone Angel celebrates the triumph of
the spirit, and reveals Margaret Laurence at the height of her powers as
a writer of extraordinary craft and profound insight into the workings
of the human heart.
**
Margaret Laurence's most celebrated novel introduced readers to one of
the most memorable characters in Canadian fiction. Hagar Shipley is
stubborn, querulous, self-reliant, and, at ninety, with her life nearly
behind her, she makes a bold last step towards freedom and
independence.
As her story unfolds, we are drawn into her past. We meet Hagar as a
young girl growing up in a black prairie town; as the wife of a virile
but unsuccessful farmer with whom her marriage was stormy; as a mother
who dominates her younger son; and, finally, as an old woman isolated by
an uncompromising pride and by the stern virtues she has inherited from
her pioneer ancestors.