It consists of five stories concerning the misadventures of Dancy Flammarion, the albino girl and monster hunter who first appeared in Kiernan's 2001 novel, Threshold.

The tales follow Dancy from her childhood in the backwoods and swamps of the Florida panhandle to her teenage duels with strange and murderous creatures in south Georgia.

Haunted by a being which may or may not be an angel, Dancy is driven from one encounter to the next, gradually beginning to doubt the nature of her quest.

The book's afterword, "On the Road to Jefferson," was originally released as a chapbook by Subterranean Press in 2002 to accompany the hardcover edition of "Les Fleurs Empoisonnées," titled In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers.

In February 2014, Dark Horse Books released a new and expanded second edition of Alabaster, with a new author's preface and "Highway 97," a Dancy Flammarion story that had, until then, been available only as a Subterranean Press chapbook.