Who is Dagmar from Stop-time and what is their importance? Stop-time English & Literature Dagmar | Stop-time

Dagmar is the author's mother, an immigrant from Denmark. She was "a foreigner without friends or family," the author writes. "She had watched one life collapse, and where a weaker woman might have given up, she reorganized with the idea of building herself another." This "building", as the author portrays it, includes becoming involved with another man, Jean, shortly after the death of her first husband, enduring Jean's many attempts at making a quick and relatively easy living, and finally leaving the relationship when it becomes clear that he was never going to give her the kind of life she wanted.