When I was nine-years-old my only uncle lost control of his car on an icy road, and, after flipping several times, was thrown violently from his vehicle.His mother (my grandmother) received a call that night that no parent ever wants to receive. Her son was in the hospital, was in very serious condition, and could she come soon, please?My grandmother arrived at the hospital to find that her handsome, vibrant, newly-engaged youngest son was paralyzed from the neck down.And through the years I have wondered. . . did she collapse immediately? Did she scream? How long did it take before she fell completely apart, and what was the glue that put her parts back together?I never learned the answers to any of these questions (how could I ever have brought myself to ask?), I only know that, for the next year of her life, she drove over an hour to the hospital each day, to oversee the installation of ventilators, feeding and drainage tubes, and to offer encouragement to her 29-year-old son. Of course, honey, of course it's going to be okay.She met the fiancée out for coffee, where the young woman nervously asked if she could go ahead and break off their engagement for her?She insisted he have the dignity of fresh, proper clothes every day instead of hospital gowns and she often laundered them well into the night, after driving the long commute home.She stayed every day, helped dress her grown son's broken body and held bent straws filled with water to his lips.And, at the year's end. . . she had a son dead from pneumonia and a diagnosis of cervical cancer.This is a true story, and my grandmother (who died 7 years ago) would have been mad as hell at me for telling it to you. She'd have said it was none of your business.And maybe it isn't. But, I could not believe it, I just could not believe it. When I met the protagonist of The Stone Angel, Hagar Currie Shipley, I found myself staring my grandmother right in the face. Hagar IS my grandmother. She's a woman who was broken by tragedy and disappointment. A woman who watched loved ones die tragically and who woke up one day to find herself a prisoner of her own bitterness.Because, you see, when we grandkids started flying in to spend summers with Grandmother, two years after the tragedy. . . we were the recipients of a great hostess, a good cook, and a devoted concierge, but we were also the recipients of an anger and a bitterness that could never be resolved and could never go away.To be completely frank, I thought my grandmother was a real bitch.Just as Marvin and Doris (Hagar's son and daughter-in-law) feel about Hagar. And they are conflicted by familial obligation, but also so very tired of the verbal barbs and the never-ending responsibility of caring for a person who can't ever seem to be kind or thankful.And this author, Margaret Laurence, is a genius, because she takes a real bitch like Hagar. . . and she cleverly juxtaposes her present with her past and the aging mother/mother-in-law with her aging, adult kids, and writes, “How you see a thing—it depends which side of the fence you're on.”And I don't particularly like Hagar or my grandmother any more than I did at the start of this book, but I came to feel that I understood both women better by the end of it. Hagar's unspoken but felt regrets cut me deeply to my core. And it made me realize. . . some people just carry the weight of their broken bones better than others.