THE STONE ANGEL is the portrait of a proud, energetic and impulsive woman - Hagar Shipley - as seen through her own eyes at the age of ninety. Her reflections on her past form a vividly-etched chronicle of a girlhood shaped and dominated by her father; of a breakaway marriage to a virile but negligent farmer; of her complex ties to two sons - the conventional Marvin, and the flamboyant, adored John, whom she eventually destroys. Hagar in widowhood is still fiercely responsible, still armored by her steely humor, still isolated by her life-long habits of pride and self-reliance. But she does not remain untouched. In Hagar's ultimate self-confrontation, her final reckoning of the wages of love, Margaret Laurence has created one of contemporary literature's most stunning images of a woman's fate.

THE STONE ANGEL is the first part of the acclaimed Manawaka series which also includes A Jest of God, The Fire-Dwellers, A Bird in the House, and The Diviners.