The Stone Angel, The Diviners, and A Bird in the House are three of the five books in Margaret Laurence's renowned "Manawaka series," named for the small Canadian prairie town in which they take place. Each of these books is narrated by a strong woman growing up in the town and struggling with phy[...]

Hagar Shipley, a proud and irascible nonagenarian, retreats in the face of her approaching death and the bitter squabbling of her son and his wife to reflect on her past - her childhood marriage to tough-talking Bram Shipley, her two sons, the harshness of farm life on the prairie, her own failures[...]