The Stone Angel

The Stone Angel is a novel by Margaret Laurence first published in 1964. The heroine of the novel is Hagar Shipley, a 90-year-old woman who is endowed with a sharp mind and a proud, unyielding temper. Hagar is having difficulty coming to terms with her own death, and for that reason, she is desperately resisting her son's efforts to place her in a nursing home, as she perceives this as a symbol of her demise. She decides to run away from home, and, left alone, she becomes immersed in reflections of the past, taking the reader through the story of her life and the many tumultuous events that have shaped her.