The Stone Diaries is Carol Shields"s most celebrated work and one of the most critically acclaimed and successful novels of the past two decades. A fictional autobiography of an ordinary woman, this multi-award-winning book (Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Governor-General"s Award) serves as a record of the last century. Daisy Goodwill is on a journey of self-discovery. From her last days in a Florida nursing home she looks back in an attempt to make sense of her life story. Her birth in a turn of the century farmhouse is a shock, born to a woman so obese she doesn"t even realize she is pregnant. Widowed on her honeymoon after her husband takes his own life, there is another marriage, children and a beloved hobby that becomes a career, of sorts. It is a life like any other, filled with the richness of human relations and the sting of disappointments both big and small. The beauty of this work lies in the details, the tiny brushstrokes of character and setting, at which Carol Shields is the undisputed master. This engrossing abridged recording was first broadcast on CBC Radio in 1995. Carol Shields both reviewed and approved the abridgement and the recording.