[1] The book is the fictional autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a seemingly ordinary woman whose life is marked by death and loss from the beginning, when her mother dies during childbirth.

Mercy dies of eclampsia shortly after giving birth, and for the first eleven years of her life Daisy is left to the care of her neighbour, Mrs. Clarentine Flett.

That year Mrs. Flett is struck and killed by a speeding cyclist, and Daisy eventually goes to live with her estranged father in Indiana while Barker moves to Ottawa.

After revealing to her friends that she feels stifled, Daisy takes the train to Ottawa, stopping to see Niagara Falls and the Dionne quintuplets along the way.

Daisy takes over her late husband's gardening column in the local paper as "Mrs. Green Thumb" and her oldest daughter goes off to college.

Daisy visits her two childhood friends 'Fraidy' and 'Beans' and dates her editor Jay Dudley until he callously informs her that her gardening column has been taken over by a full-timer.

After her job is taken over by someone else Daisy falls into a deep depression, punctuated by fits of rage, unable to get out of bed or take care of herself, although she seems to know that this will eventually pass.

She is able to maintain a small social circle at the hospital but is eventually moved to a long-term care facility since she can no longer walk.

[4] Kirkus Reviews wrote: "Shields, who began as a miniaturist, has come full bloom with this latest exploration of domestic plenitude and paucity; she's entered a mature, luminous period, devising a style that develops an earlier whimsical fabulism into a hard-edged lyricism perfect for the ambitious bicultural exploration she undertakes here.

[citation needed] Although Stone Diaries has been reprinted many times, the first Canadian edition is still not common in the used/rare book field.