So begins The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, a novel that, despite its relatively average size (it’s a mere slip of a book for King, weighing in at only 224 pages), manages to touch on many of Stephen King’s favorite themes: spirituality, baseball, children in jeopardy, and the uneasy feeling that something bad is always lurking just over the horizon.
The book came as a total surprise to everyone—his fans, his publisher, and, in fact, to the author himself. (In a note to reviewers accompanying promotional copies of this novel, King said, “If books were babies, I’d call The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon the result of an unplanned pregnancy.”) King’s idea, conceived during a baseball game at Boston’s Fenway Park, was to write a variation on “Hansel and Gretel,” only without Hansel. The end result was a modern fairy tale divided into nine “innings” rather than chapters, a thoughtful reflection on the nature of God with echoes of Jack London’s classic story “To Light a Fire” thrown in for good measure.
King has been writing about God—the possibility of God, and the ramifications of His existence—for over two decades now, in books as diverse as The Stand (1978) and Desperation (1996). Lost in the woods, young Trisha McFarland, the central character in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, finds herself contemplating this subject as well; praying, she reflects on a conversation she had with her father a month before. During that talk, she asked him if he believed in God. Her bemused dad said he didn’t have faith in a God that marks the death “of every bird in Australia or every bug in India.” But he does believe there has to be something; he refers to this “insensate force for the good” as the “Subaudible,” reflecting his belief in a benevolent deity who doesn’t necessarily involve himself in humanity’s day-to-day activities.
The author walks a fine line between these two concepts, never quite committing to either one. This being a Stephen King novel, however, there is a countervailing force, a malevolent entity that Trisha comes to think of as “the God of the Lost.” This god feeds on her fear, waiting for the proper moment to strike.
Utterly realistic, this bildungsroman, or coming-of-age fiction, nevertheless contains numerous references to the Stephen King Universe. For example, listening to her Walkman, Trisha picks up radio station WCAS in Castle Rock, a town she remembers passing through once on her way to the Appalachian Trail. The town has apparently recovered from the massive wounds Leland Gaunt inflicted on it—in delivering the local news, the announcer mentions that folks in the Rock are up in arms about a bar that is featuring topless dancers, and that Castle Rock Speedway is supposed to reopen on the Fourth of July.
THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON: PRIMARY SUBJECTS
TRISHA McFARLAND: Nine years old, but “big for her age,” Trisha McFarland finds herself in an uncomfortable position after her parents’ divorce. Although favoring her father, Trisha is placed in her mother’s custody, along with her older brother, Pete. Life with her mother is okay, but Trisha feels that her whiny brother gets all the attention. Coerced into participating in a six-mile hike (part of her mother’s forced program of family togetherness), Trisha wanders off the trail to relieve herself and to escape her mother and brother’s constant bickering. Mistakenly believing that she is only a few yards from the trail, Trisha loses her bearings. But because she keeps moving, she quickly places herself beyond the reach of even the most diligent search party.
Trisha spends nine days wandering in the forest, searching for a way out. She proves quite resourceful, surviving due to bits and pieces of forest lore she has managed to store up over her young life. Desperate for food, and nearly dehydrated, Trisha begins to hallucinate, imagining that she is being accompanied by her hero, Boston Red Sox relief pitcher Tom Gordon. At first merely a silent, reassuring presence, Gordon eventually begins to talk to her, revealing his philosophy on being a good closer in the game. Trisha takes this advice to heart; it proves invaluable when she is forced to confront the God of the Lost, a malevolent presence that has been stalking her since she entered the forest.
Trisha survives her ordeal. When last seen, she was recuperating from pneumonia in a hospital bed.
TOM GORDON: Lost in the woods, Trisha finds herself imagining that her favorite Boston Red Sox player, relief pitcher Tom Gordon, is with her. She fantasizes that he is keeping her company and providing guidance on how to tough out the terrible situation in which she finds herself. Tom’s presence keeps her sane; his advice helps her stay alive. Tom tells Trisha that, like a relief pitcher, it’s God’s nature to come on in the bottom of the ninth. He also advises her that the secret of being a good closer is establishing who is better—you can let your opponent beat you, but you must not beat yourself.
These are the thoughts that cascade through Trisha’s mind when the God of the Lost confronts her near the end of her journey. The God, having taken the form of a bear, looms over the girl, ready to maul her. Trisha faces the deadly animal, pelting it between the eyes with her Walkman, delivering a pitch her hero would surely appreciate.
(It should be noted for non-sports fans that professional baseball player Tom Gordon, #36, actually exists. In 1998, he saved forty-four games for King’s beloved Red Sox. Gordon is famous for what one character in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon refers to as “that pointin’ thing”—after each successful save, he points briefly to the sky, acknowledging God’s presence.)
LARRY McFARLAND: Trisha’s dad, a folksy man given to saying things like, “I believe it’s beer o’clock.” Larry and his daughter are quite close, bonding during the many happy hours they spend together watching and discussing their favorite team, the Boston Red Sox. Larry introduces Trisha to the idea of the “Subaudible.” Although Larry takes comfort in his wife’s bed during their ordeal, it seems apparent that they will not reconcile.
QUILLA ANDERSON: Trisha’s mother, she does the best she can as a single parent of two children. Forced to minister to her whiny son, Pete, Quilla virtually ignores her daughter, Trisha. This benign neglect contributes to Trisha’s exasperation with her mother and brother, an emotion that leads her to abandon the trail and become lost in the Maine woods.
THE SUBAUDIBLE: Larry McFarland’s name for the force “that keeps drunken teenagers—most drunken teenagers—from crashing their cars when they’re coming home from the senior prom or their first big rock concert. That keeps most planes from crashing even when something goes wrong.” Larry believes that the very fact that no country has used a nuclear weapon on living people since 1945 suggests that something must be looking out for the human race. He calls that something the Subaudible.
THE THREE ROBED FIGURES: Trisha hallucinates this trio, who represent the various gods Trisha has been thinking about during her trek. Two of them are in white garb, one wears black. The first, who resembles Mr. Bork, Trisha’s science teacher at Sanford Elementary School, is clothed in white. He tells Trisha he represents the God of Tom Gordon, the “one he points up to when he gets the save.” He also informs her that Tom’s God can’t help, being busy with other things: “As a rule he doesn’t intervene in human affairs, anyway, although I must admit he is a sports fan. Not necessarily a Red Sox fan, however.”
The second figure is also outfitted in white. He resembles Trisha’s father, Larry McFarland. When Trisha asks him if he comes from the Subaudible, he tells her he is the Subaudible. Stating that he is “quite weak,” the figure tells her that he, too, cannot help her. The third figure, draped in black, lifts its claws to its hood, pushing it back to reveal a misshapen head made of wasps. “I come from the thing in the woods,” he tells her. “I come from the God of the Lost. It has been watching you. It has been waiting for you. It is your miracle, and you are its.”
THE GOD OF THE WOODS: Also known as the God of the Lost. Shortly into her odyssey, Trisha realizes she is not entirely alone—something subhuman, purely evil, is stalking her, waiting for an opportunity to strike. Trisha knows instinctively that it can take her anytime it wants, but is merely waiting for her to “ripen.” The God of the Woods
confronts Trisha at the end of the novel, taking the form of a bear.
TRAVIS HERRICK: A poacher, Travis is hunting for an out-of-season deer when he comes upon a little girl facing off against a bear. The youngster is Trisha, the bear is the God of the Lost. Herrick shoots the bear’s ear off seconds before Trisha hits him in the head with her thrown Walkman. Shaken, the bear lumbers off into the woods. Rather than a fine, Travis instead becomes a hero, receiving a float in Grafton Notch’s 1998 Fourth of July parade.
THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON: TRIVIA
• Actress Anne Heche narrated an unabridged audio version.
• At 224 pages in the hardcover edition, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is King’s second-shortest published novel to date, after Carrie.
• In 2004, a pop-up version of Girl aimed at a younger audience was published by Little Simon, a division of Simon and Schuster. King’s novel was adapted by suspense writer Peter Abrahams. The book featured illustrations by Alan Dingman and paper engineering by Kees Moerbeek.
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KINGDOM HOSPITAL
(2004)
This fifteen-hour novel for television was inspired by a 1994 Dutch miniseries, Riget (a.k.a. The Kingdom), by film director Lars von Trier. That series, which proved popular enough to spawn a sequel, was about a haunted hospital whose quirky staff is too busy engaging in petty bureaucratic squabbles to take notice of the supernatural mayhem occurring all around them.
King became aware of The Kingdom while on location in Estes, Colorado, for the filming of the 1997 remake of The Shining, where he rented and viewed a VHS tape of the miniseries. Feeling an affinity for the material, he secured the necessary rights to adapt Trier’s material for an American audience. King put his own spin on the story by adding a subplot about a famous artist who is admitted to the hospital after being struck by a car (sound familiar?).
To bring the series to the screen, King (himself an executive producer) once again allied himself with director Craig R. Baxley and executive producer Mark Carliner. The series was scored by Gary Chang, who had also performed that task on Rose Red and Storm of the Century.
A cross between Twin Peaks and E.R., or E.R. and King’s own The Shining, Kingdom Hospital’s premiere garnered significant ratings, but failed to keep its audience, losing significant chunks of its viewership as the series progressed. ABC seemed to lose faith in the series, and began shuffling its airdates, further reducing any potential audience by making it difficult to find (according to King, the show “went from initial ratings of 5.5 to 3.7 to 2.3, finally bottoming out at something like a 1.0, which is basically the ratings equivalent of the black death”). Musing about why the show failed in a column in Entertainment Weekly titled “A Kingdom That Didn’t Come,” King theorized that the show required its viewers to do a lot of “heavy lifting” in the first few episodes, work they apparently weren’t willing to do.
Although a bit over the top at times, Kingdom Hospital did have its moments. Two episodes, the ninth and tenth in the series, were especially noteworthy. Episode 9, entitled “Butterfingers,” featured a Bill Buckneresque character named Earl “Error” Candleton, whose untimely error cost his team, the Robins, the 1987 World Series title. Through the intervention of Peter and Mary, Earl travels back in time, makes the play, and avoids fifteen years of heartbreak. The episode was an odd foreshadowing of the Boston Red Sox’s journey to baseball redemption later in 2004 (it also heralded Roland’s loop back in time to when he made the mistake of failing to pick up the horn of Eld at Jericho Hill). Episode 10, “The Passion of Reverend Jimmy,” was a touching retelling of the story of the life and death of Jesus Christ, giving the series its second uplifting episode in as many weeks.
Following the lead of King’s previous miniseries, Rose Red, Kingdom Hospital spawned a companion diary, entitled The Journals of Eleanor Druse: My Investigation of the Kingdom Hospital Incident. Purporting to be Mrs. Druse’s personal account of her investigations into the psychic phenomena at Kingdom Hospital, it chronicles a period beginning in December 2002 and ending in November 2003, a few months before the miniseries begins. The book, written by King’s collaborator on the series, Richard Dooling (who wrote episodes 6, 7, and 8 and cowrote 5), enjoyed modest commercial success.
KINGDOM HOSPITAL: PRIMARY SUBJECTS
PETER RICKMAN: A gifted artist, Peter Rickman functions as King’s alter ego in the miniseries. Rickman (perhaps named after British horror writer Phil Rickman) finds himself in Kingdom Hospital after he is struck by a vehicle driven by the stoned David Hooman. Initially in a coma, the badly injured Rickman awakens with telepathic powers, coming into contact with several supernatural creatures, including Antubis, Mary Jensen, and the teenage boy Paul. Peter, who witnesses many wonders while a patient in Kingdom Hospital, is instrumental in solving the mystery that haunts the cursed institution.
NATALIE RICKMAN: Peter Rickman’s wife, she stays by his side during his ordeal. To pass the time, she reads the book Misery, by an author named Stephen King.
OTTO: A visually impaired security guard at Kingdom Hospital, he is always accompanied by Blondi, a German shepherd, who helps him get around. Otto’s eye problems are miraculously cured in the episode entitled “The Passion of Reverend Jimmy.”
DR. HOOK: The brilliant, eccentric Hook is considered a maverick by the more conservative members of the Kingdom Hospital staff. The fortysomething neurosurgeon has spent his time at Kingdom Hospital amassing evidence against doctors he considers incompetent, which he stores in his apartment located in the depths of the hospital. Hook is drawn into the middle of the supernatural phenomena occurring in the hospital by virtue of being Peter Rickman’s physician and surgeon, and by his association with Eleanor Druse.
ELEANOR SARAH “SALLY” DRUSE: A psychic with a strong connection to the world beyond, Eleanor feels personally obligated to solve the mystery of Kingdom Hospital. Concocting false illnesses as a way to remain inside its walls, she conducts her private investigation into the hospital’s past.
DR. STEGMAN: The head neurosurgeon at Kingdom Hospital, “Steg” is arrogant, pompous, overbearing, and, sadly, incompetent. Forced by his incompetency to leave a prestigious Boston hospital, Stegman spends much of his time making his colleagues at Kingdom Hospital miserable. Taking advantage of Stegman’s instability, the evil forces at the hospital attempt to use him as a weapon against the likes of Hook and Eleanor Druse.
DAVID HOOMAN: The hit-and-run driver of the minivan that hits Peter Rickman, he later falls off the roof of his house, sustaining fatal injuries.
ROLF PEDERSON: The hospitalized killer whom the evil forces of Kingdom Hospital influence to do their bidding.
GATES FALLS MILL: A Dickensian textile mill that burned to the ground on All Souls’ Day in 1869, claiming the lives of dozens of innocent children working on-site at the time. The fire was set by the mill’s owners, desirous of the insurance money the tragedy would generate.
EBENEZER GOTTREICH: Owner of the Gates Falls Mill. In 1869, he conspires with the mill’s foreman, Hagarty, to burn it down for the insurance money.
HAGARTY: The foreman of the Gates Falls Mill, he helps Ebenezer Gottreich to burn down the facility.
DR. KLAUS GOTTREICH: Ebenezer’s sadistic brother, he runs an on-site clinic to care for the sick and injured employees of the mill. The clinic, however, is merely a front for his horrid experiments into the nature of pain. Gottreich, whose spirit haunts Kingdom Hospital, was responsible for the death of young Mary Jensen.
KINGDOM HOSPITAL: Located in Lewiston, Maine, the hospital was built on the site of the former Gates Falls Mill. It is actually the second hospital to be built on that site; the first, Gottreich Hospital, burned down at the end of the 1930s, again on All Souls’ Day. The hospital is haunted by the spirits of several children who tragically died in the first fire. The hospital is subject to several unexplained phenomena, including minor, localized earthquakes.
ANTUBIS: To all appearances an oversized anteater or a
ardvark, Antubis (the name seems to be a combination of anteater and Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god who conducted the dead to judgment) physically enters Peter Rickman’s life on the day of his accident (Peter had painted the beast prior to encountering it in the flesh). He tells Peter he saved him from sure death because he needs the artist to do him “a solid.”
ABEL and CHRISTA: Two twentysomething hospital workers with
Down Syndrome, this happy pair seems acutely in tune with all goings-on at the hospital, both natural and supernatural.
MARY JENSEN: The nine-year-old Mary worked at the Gates Falls
Mill as a timekeeper. Mary’s tortured spirit is trapped within the walls of Kingdom Hospital. Through the efforts of Sally Druse, Dr. Hook, and Peter Rickman, her spirit is freed from its prison.
PAUL: Like Mary, a spirit that haunts Kingdom Hospital. Unlike Mary, he labors on behalf of the dark forces present in the complex. He implores Rolf Pederson to kill Peter Rickman and Sally Druse, then tries to work through Earl Candleton, a deceased ex-major league baseball player. Finally, he turns his attention to the already unstable Dr. Stegman.
The Complete Stephen King Universe Page 27
