Margins
Cavedweller book cover
Cavedweller
1998
First Published
3.74
Average Rating
446
Number of Pages

When Delia Byrd packs her car and begins the long trip home from Los Angeles - from the glamour of the rock 'n roll business, her passion for singing and songwriting, and the darker days of whisky and violence and too much belief in the promises of a man she loved - she heads to Cairo, Georgia, and her own unresolved past. Ten years earlier, Delia left the husband who turned on her, abandoned her two daughters, one an infant, and fled to California. But Delia is pulled back to Georgia: to a world of convenience stores and biscuit factories, kudzu and deep-rooted Baptism-to make a deal with the man she paid a high price to leave. She brings her third daughter, Cissy, with her. And as the lives of Delia, Cissy, Amanda, and Dede converge, Delia's past uncoils into the present with a ferocity that brings all four women to terms with themselves and with one another. Told in the incantatory and unforgettable voice of one of America's greatest storytellers, Cavedweller is a sweeping novel of the human spirit that maps a world of "lost" and "known" caves, the unexplored recesses of the heart, and the lives of four women at a place where violence, and what redeems it, intersect. Cavedweller is the long-awaited, greatly anticipated second novel from a beloved author with a strong and loyal audience.

Avg Rating
3.74
Number of Ratings
4,284
5 STARS
23%
4 STARS
39%
3 STARS
30%
2 STARS
7%
1 STARS
2%
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Author

Dorothy Allison
Dorothy Allison
Author · 9 books

Dorothy Allison is an American writer, speaker, and member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Themes in Allison's work include class struggle, child and sexual abuse, women, lesbianism, feminism, and family. Allison's first novel, the semi-autobiographical Bastard Out of Carolina, was published in 1992 and was one of five finalists for the 1992 National Book Award. Allison founded The Independent Spirit Award in 1998, a prize given annually to an individual whose work within the small press and independent bookstore circuit has helped sustain that enterprise.

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