Cavedweller

by Kate Moira Ryan, Dorothy Allison

Adapted from the bestselling novel by Dorothy Allison, Cavedweller follows Delia Byrd, the forty-year-old lead singer of the group Mud Dog whose rock-star boyfriend has just died in an accident, as she decides to leave Los Angeles and return home to rural Georgia with her teenage daughter, Cissy, in tow. Back in Georgia is the ex-husband, now dying of cancer, and the two daughters, Dede and Amanda, that Delia abandoned fourteen years ago. Dede, who seems most like her mother, is the wild and rebellious one, fast on the road to becoming an alcoholic and the town tramp. Amanda, in contrast, has sublimated her anger into becoming a sanctimonious, Bible-thumping fundamentalist. To rebuild a family from the ruins she left behind, Delia has her work cut out for her, but in those ruins and in that work lies the promise of her redemption.

68 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2004

About the author

As a NYC-based playwright, I have worked in theater most of my life. I love creating worlds and telling stories. From the time I was a child, I have always been a voracious reader of mysteries as well as a keen student of history, in particular, of WWII. I created the Slim Moran Mystery Series inspired by many stories from the past, some heroic and some horrific and some hidden for years. One, in particular, caught my interest. My friend was a young American bride in 1950's Paris.The first time she used her fireplace on Rue de Seine, smoke flooded the room. She opened the flu, guns fell from the chimney, and that is when she realized her husband was in the Resistance. The story piqued my interest, and I began to write. I decided to focus on the millions of people who were displaced and families ripped apart in WWII. Some spent years searching in vain for their loved ones. I decided to create a detective for the lost to give a voice to those who disappeared.
The Lost Spy is the first book in the Slim Moran Series. In the second book, The Lost Boy, Slim searches for a Polish child taken by the Nazis and 'Germanized.' Each book will be based on a historical event and feature a missing person case which Slim tries to solve because I believe that everyone who is lost deserves to be found. Thank you for spending time with my first book and with Slim Moran.