After stalking and saving the life of her favorite fiction author in a car accident, his manic obsessor holds him captive in her remote Colorado home then forces him to write back to life the popular literary character he killed off.

Dolores Claiborne was accused of killing her abusive husband twenty years ago, but the court's findings were inconclusive and she was allowed to walk free. Now she has been accused of killing her employer, Vera Donovan, and this time there is a witness who can place her at the scene of the crime. Things look bad for Dolores when her daughter Selena, a successful Manhattan magazine writer, returns to cover the story.