Atypically for a King novel, it has no chapters, double-spacing between paragraphs, or other section breaks; thus, the text is a single continuous narrative, which reads like the transcription of a spoken monologue.
[1] The story introduced the fictional community of Little Tall Island, which Stephen King later used as the setting for the original TV mini-series Storm of the Century.
[4][5] Dolores Claiborne, an opinionated 65-year-old widow living on the tiny Maine community of Little Tall Island, is suspected of murdering her wealthy, elderly employer, Vera Donovan.
After Vera's husband dies in a car crash in 1960, she spends increasing time at her island house, eventually moving there permanently.
Dolores further reveals that when she began working at the Donovan house, her marriage to Joe was already in distress due to his alcoholism, temper, and domestic violence.
The marriage problems escalate one night in 1960 when Joe viciously hits Dolores in the back with a piece of stove wood over a perceived slight.
After speculating she has met a boy or become involved in drugs, Dolores finally confronts her daughter as they return home on the island ferry.
An unusually sympathetic Vera reveals she has had some sort of experience with Dolores's "inside eye", and casually remarks that men like Joe often die in accidents, leaving their wives everything.
As she departs, she implies she arranged the car crash that killed her own husband and advises Dolores that "sometimes, an accident can be an unhappy woman's best friend."
Vera becomes obsessed with a total solar eclipse that will be visible from the island, insisting the event will convince her estranged children to visit her.
When it becomes clear her children will not be joining her for the eclipse, Vera becomes despondent and lashes out at her hired help, calming only after Dolores confronts her over the unjust firing of one of the maids.
On the day of the eclipse, Dolores buys Joe a bottle of scotch and makes him a sandwich, lowering his guard, and they share their first moment of physical affection in many years.
She confesses that Vera, in one of her hallucinations, managed to exit her wheelchair and fled in terror from "the dust bunnies", falling down a flight of stairs.
[6] Although several supernatural occurrences are implied, the only such events that clearly occur in the book are two telepathic visions of a nameless young girl sexually victimized by her father, which, along with the solar eclipse backdrop, form a link to King's novel Gerald's Game.
It starred Kathy Bates as Dolores, with Jennifer Jason Leigh as her daughter Selena, and Judy Parfitt as Vera Donovan.
[10] Dolores Claiborne, the operatic adaptation of the novel composed by Tobias Picker to a libretto by J. D. McClatchy, premiered at San Francisco Opera on September 18, 2013, with Patricia Racette in the title role.