Much like her award-winning novel, Bastard Out of Carolina, Cavedweller deals with domestic violence, friendship among women, mother–daughter bonds, and poverty in the small-town American South.
Delia Byrd is a native of Cayro, Georgia, and a recovering alcoholic who lives in Los Angeles with her surly ten-year-old daughter, Cissy.
After a disappointing reunion with the grandfather who raised her, Delia enrolls Cissy at the local school, gets a job as a cleaning woman and sinks into a deep depression.
After emerging from the depression, Delia embarks on a quest to regain custody of her now-pubescent daughters, Amanda and Dede, from their hateful and puritanical paternal grandmother.
Clint, who is gravely ill with cancer, agrees to transfer legal custody of the girls to Delia if she moves into his house and cares for him as he is unwilling to spend his last days in a hospital.
After undergoing a procedure to remove gallstones, Amanda suffers a minor nervous collapse and begins rethinking her previous religiosity.
Cissy, who has had problems fitting in at school, develops an abiding friendship with Nolan, a classmate who shares her passion for science fiction novels.
Dede, who has several brushes with the law and briefly battles drug addiction, eventually gets a job managing the convenience store.