Cavedweller

Summary (from the publisher): When Delia Byrd packs up her old Datsun and her daughter Cissy and gets on the Santa Monica Freeway heading south and east, she is leaving everything she has known for ten years: the tinsel glitter of the rock 'n' roll business; her passion for singing and songwriting; and a life lived on credit cards and whiskey with a man who made big promises he couldn't keep. Delia Byrd is headed back to Cayro, Georgia, and for the first time in years, she knows what she wants - the two daughters she left behind a lifetime ago. Cayro, Georgia, is a world of truck farms and convenience stores, biscuit franchises and deep rooted Baptism. And, beneath this surface, caves: lost caves, known caves; caves called "Little Mouth" and "Paula's Lost"; caves where color explodes in the dark and where people have died and been buried; caves waiting to be mapped and explored. Cayro, with its red earth and kudzu, is the only terrain Clint Windsor, the man Delia ran from, and the two girls, Amanda and Dede, have ever known. And when Delia and Cissy reach Cayro, the past unfurls into the present, and Cayro, Georgia, becomes a more complicated place than any of them could have imagined.

 

Review: Ten years before, Delia Byrd left behind her abusive husband Clint and her two baby girls Amanda and Dede to follow the aspiring rockstar Randall. Randall and Delia find fame, alcoholism, and have a baby girl together, Cissy. After Randall drinks himself into an early grave, Delia packs up her youngest daughter and leaves California to return to Georgia to try to make amends for abandoning her two oldest daughters.

 

After Delia gets her girls back, the thread of the novel seems to split into five separate directions. Delia fixes hair, Amanda becomes a good Christian wife and mother, Dede pursues her angst and love of driving, and Cissy seeks out the thrill and darkness to be found in caves. The plot seemed meandering and lost, split in multiple strands that could each be their own book.

 

The women agree that they aren't "the type" (388) to talk and share their feelings. Cissy describes it as "the family connection that seemed so tenuous" (282). Still, it felt as if the women were never reconciled and lacking connection for most of the novel. The women find that they cannot fix their past, but in the end of the novel, they seem to all be limping towards a brighter future, one with a minimum of heartbreak, rage, and abuse.

 

This novel was good. However, after reading Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina, it paled in comparison. However, that being said, Allison does tragedy and heartbreak fiction incredibly well, and there were many lines that caught my eye: "Delia's memories of that moment were as golden and smoky as two inches of whiskey in a thick tumbler" (14); "Maybe that was the way music really worked, Cissy thought. Maybe talent was a blade cutting hard through those who had less" (257); and "When Nolan played for her, Cissy felt like a Baptist child at a Catholic mass - intimidated, awed, and suspicious" (260).

 

Stars: 3