The Jailing of Cecilia Capture by Janet Campbell Hale follows a thirty-year-old Native American woman who was arrested for drunk driving. Much of the novel comprises her recollections from childhood. At the opening scene, Cecilia has been booked in prison and laments the likelihood of her mugshots making her look ugly. She recalls how her parents influenced her conception of femininity (her mother, emotionally abused by Cecilia's father, concluded that women's only avenue to success was via their looks). She grew up on an Indian reservation with a Native American father and a white mother.

Cecilia learns that she will not be released on bail, owing to an unpaid welfare assessment dating from when she was working while receiving a stipend for her child born to a drafted soldier (with whom she had an affair as a teenager). Her previous life bore such differences from, but left many unresolved tensions with, her current life as a successful law student.

Cecilia recalls the circumstances of her having been pulled over: she was celebrating her thirtieth birthday at a bar after law school, where she flirted with a stranger before driving home. When she is released from prison, her husband must pick her up, and they agree to divorce. Cecilia, on the brink of suicide, learns that she will not have to return to jail, because her case has been dismissed. Resolved not to kill herself, she visits the grave of her first lover.