Dolores Claiborne

A 65-year-old widow confesses to orchestrating her husband's death nearly 30 years prior while trying to clear her name of a murder she did not commit.

Dolores Claiborne is a 1992 psychological thriller novel by Stephen King. The novel is narrated by the titular character, a 65-year-old widow living in the tiny Maine community of Little Tall Island, who is suspected of murdering her wealthy, elderly employer, Vera Donovan. The story is presented as a transcript of her statement to the local constable and a stenographer. Unlike many of King's works, little focus is given to the supernatural, though two telepathic visions of a nameless young girl sexually victimized by her father form a link to King's novel Gerald's Game.

Quick Facts

Author: Stephen King
Audio read by: Frances Sternhagen
Cover artist: Rob Wood
Illustrator: Bill Russell
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre: Psychological thriller
Publisher: Viking

Lore & Background

The novel is written atypically for King, with no chapters, double-spacing between paragraphs, or other section breaks; the text is a single continuous narrative that reads like the transcription of a spoken monologue, written entirely in the first person in a local dialect. The narrative is a transcript of Dolores Claiborne's statement to the local constable and a stenographer. Dolores wants to make clear she did not kill Vera, whom she had looked after for years, but does confess to orchestrating the death of her husband, Joe St. George, almost 30 years previously. The novel introduces the fictional community of Little Tall Island, which King later used as the setting for the original TV mini-series Storm of the Century. It was the best-selling novel of 1992 in the United States.

Reader's Guide

The novel's protagonist is Dolores Claiborne, a 65-year-old housekeeper. Vera Donovan is her employer, described as 'a high-riding bitch' with a fanatical devotion to household procedures. Joe St. George is Dolores's abusive, inconsistently employed, racist husband. Their children are Selena St. George, who becomes a well-known journalist but struggles with alcoholism; Joe St. George Jr., who becomes a state senator in Maine; and Pete St. George, the youngest son. The novel led to a 1995 movie adaptation starring Kathy Bates that Time named among the top 10 greatest Stephen King film adaptations in 2013. A two-act opera adaptation premiered in San Francisco in 2013. The only clearly supernatural events 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.