Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Novel
    The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Novel
    The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Novel
    Ebook229 pages4 hours

    The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Novel

    By Stephen King

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    From international bestseller Stephen King, a classic story that engages our emotions on the most primal level, a fairy tale grimmer than Grimm but aglow with a girl’s indomitable spirit.

    What if the woods were full of them? And of course they were, the woods were full of everything you didn’t like, everything you were afraid of and instinctively loathed, everything that tried to overwhelm you with nasty, no-brain panic.

    The brochure promised a “moderate-to-difficult” six-mile hike on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail, where nine-year-old Trisha McFarland was to spend Saturday with her older brother Pete and her recently divorced mother. When she wanders off to escape their constant bickering, then tries to catch up by attempting a shortcut through the woods, Trisha strays deeper into a wilderness full of peril and terror. Especially when night falls.

    Trisha has only her wits for navigation, only her ingenuity as a defense against the elements, only her courage and faith to withstand her mounting fear. For solace she tunes her Walkman to broadcasts of Boston Red Sox games and the gritty performances of her hero, number thirty-six, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. And when her radio’s reception begins to fade, Trisha imagines that Tom Gordon is with her—her key to surviving an enemy known only by the slaughtered animals and mangled trees in its wake.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateJul 15, 1999
    ISBN9780684835839
    The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Novel
    Author

    Stephen King

    Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947. In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co., accepted the novel Carrie for publication, providing him the means to leave teaching and write full-time. He has since published over 40 books and has become one of the world's most successful writers. Stephen lives in Maine and Florida with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. They are regular contributors to a number of charities including many libraries and have been honored locally for their philanthropic activities.

    Read more from Stephen King

    Related authors

    Related to The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Horror Within

      Aug 29, 2020

      Stephen King’s supreme craftsmanship lies in his ability to allow the reader to build up the horror in her/ his mind instead of explicitly describing it. Most often, this horror lurks in the most mundane situations and in the most ordinary lives, unt

      1 min read

    • Article

      8 Best Stephen King Books That Will Have You Gripped

      Mar 14, 2021

      To say that readers love Stephen King is a huge understatement. The most recent count of his total sales came to a whopping 350 million and his affable online presence, no-nonsense attitude to transphobia and right-wing politics, and extremely genero

      5 min read

    • Article

      Review: Stephen King Modeled 'The Stand' On 'Lord Of The Rings.' TV Has Done It No Favors

      Dec 17, 2020

      As a story of a world-gutting flu pandemic, Stephen King's "The Stand," whose second, superior miniseries adaptation began Thursday on CBS All Access, could not be more timely. And as a story of good and evil facing off for the usual high stakes — a

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Letterbox

      Oct 1, 2023

      Dear Old Cricket, I am astounded that Cricket is fifty years old! When I first subscribed in 1976, I didn’t know that my favorite magazine was so young. Cricket has immeasurably impacted my life, and that is no exaggeration. I still remember my first

      7 min read

    • Article

      Origin Stories: On the Value of Comics

      May 18, 2022

      The world is vast and I'm unsure of how it works, but this comic is mine, and that's enough. The post Origin Stories: On the Value of Comics appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Dads Behaving Badly

      Jun 16, 2017

      Dads Behaving Badly
      5 min read

    • Article

      Happy Endings

      Sep 1, 2023

      Happy Endings
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Life Well Lived

      Nov 10, 2022

      A Life Well Lived
      10 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2020

      The purpose of being alive is to carry a sequence of code.And so, being adopted, I’m part of a plot, a sleeper cellin enemy territory, quietly working against the systemfrom within. It’s fall, I’m on an ancestry website signing up for a DNA kit,becau

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Inherited Imagination

      Aug 18, 2020

      The Inherited Imagination
      9 min read

    • Article

      Partners In Crime

      Aug 11, 2021

      Partners In Crime
      7 min read

    • Article

      Patricia Smith Wants You to Hear Every Gunshot: The Millions Interview

      Aug 2, 2017

      My mom believed that the way to get through life was to be as beholden as possible to white people. If she was in a room and a white person walked in, her whole body would get smaller. She tried really hard to teach me how to live like that—because i

      14 min read

    • Article

      Cosmic Mindlessness

      Jul 27, 2017

      Cosmic Mindlessness
      2 min read

    • Article

      Nikki Sixx

      Oct 12, 2021

      Nikki Sixx
      14 min read

    • Article

      At a Grandfather’s Knee

      Mar 18, 2022

      At a Grandfather’s Knee
      6 min read

    Reviews for The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

    3.5/5

    2,435 ratings88 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Like all of Stephen Kings book, it was very well written. That's why he's the master. I thoroughly enjoyed the story. Right from the start you were pulling for Trisha to find her way out of the woods. The adventure she endured would have broke many of us, but the resilience of a child never ceases to amaze me. I gave this a 4 stars, if I could have, I would have said 4.5 stars.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book. I am not a Stephen King fan...his books are a little too frightening for me. But this was just wonderful. I would read it again and again.
    • 3/5
      The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is a slow book with a mixture of survival and adventure. First Looking over this I expected it to be a little more thrilling. Although this book didn't have the creepy stereotypical plot expected from Stephen King, it still gave a great sense of adventure. This book taught me a few helpful skills to help live out in the woods, but it still didn't have the detail I was looking for. This book had a fairly quick start, Trisha wonders of the trail to go to the bathroom, this is when she decided to take a shortcut, little did she know this move could kill her. Trisha didn't care what happened to her at the time, she felt like she was hated. If it wasn't for this girls huge amount of knowledge, and baseball that kept her moving she would surely be dead. By the end of the book she realizes she was loved, and that her mother would rather die herself then lose her own daughter.
    • 3/5
      Not terribly frightening story about a nine-year-old girl lost in the woods. Well-written and suspenseful.
    • 3/5
      A quick read, but it really displays how well King can write from the perspective of a child.
    • 5/5
      This is a great content nice one liked it a lot
    • 5/5
      Amazing short read. Trish is tough as nail but as a father, it still deeply hurt me reading what she goes through. Also, SK constantly plays with his constant reader as to the presence of the supernatural, creating a delectable fantastic moment.
    • 3/5
      Haven't read hardly any Stephen King, as I'm not into horror. I was given this so would not have read it otherwise.
      It is not to bad, there is not much suspense, just a general feeling of unease and disquiet that the little girl feels and she stumbles through the woods and into more and more danger.
      It is not a fully believable story as I do not think a nine year old would last that long alone.
    • 2/5
      I've read this twice and both time I had a hard time getting through it.
      I don't even know why! It wasn't awful.

      This book makes my very itchy.
    • 2/5
      Didn't love this book...not one his best.
    • 5/5
      i love this book so far
    • 5/5
      The suspense keeps your attention at all times, had to force myself to take breaks. I read this book once when I was younger, around 11 or 12, I'm 18 now and I fell in love with this book all over again.
    • 5/5
      Excellent book. I would've liked a little more in the end of the book. The life of Trisha after being rescued. Nevertheless, it was a great book.
    • 3/5
      This book is about a girl who gets lost in the woods during a family hiking trip. As she struggles to survive her ordeal in the woods she draws strength both from her idol Tom Gordon and from her Walkman that allows her to listen in on her favorite Red Sox games.I was impressed by the tenacity and skill that Trisha shows surviving in the woods for as long as she does. The story does get a bit slow at points and I kept waiting for something to happen...aside from the normal disasters you would encounter wandering around in the woods. There is also a lot about baseball in here; I am not even anywhere close to being a baseball fan and many of the baseball references were lost on me.Overall an okay read. If you are interested in survival stories with a very light element of horror to them you might like this. I did enjoy some of the survival elements here and the book is a quick read. I didn’t enjoy this nearly as much as some of Stephen King’s other books though.
    • 3/5
      This was the first Stephen King novel I read and I picked it because it was his shortest. I've read several since then and this isn't his best work. I didn't think that girl would ever get out of the woods.
    • 3/5
      Not bad survival/horror story. Strange bear / demon creature turns up at the end. Mostly enjoyed it.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this one. Its a pretty quick read, and King proved with this one that not all of his books have to be epic to be enjoyable. This is also a little more ambiguous with the supernatural, which is interesting. King's books always the supernatural elements that were terrifying, but he also had downright awful humans who were just as scary. But in this book he uses nature to be both beautiful and terrifying. He tells the story of a 9 year girl, big for her age, who gets lost in the woods and uses her will to survive. She has to forage for food and water, fend off insects and animals, and try to keep her wits about her. But, somewhere along the way, she starts to lose her mind a bit, and that's where the supernatural takes off. Did it happen, or was it all in her head? I'm like Mulder in that regard, where I Want To Believe, but the ambiguity is also scary. All I know is, the next time I go hiking, I'm staying on the path.
    • 3/5
      That’s it exactly – a fairy tale. I read some reviews on Amazon.com that cited the utter unbelievability of this novel and that’s right if you forget that it’s fiction. As fiction it works fairly well. Tricia is separated from her family and gets lost. She has her lunch and a bottle of soda but that’s it. She remembers from somewhere that certain things are edible and survives on those too. The water she drinks though, makes her sick and she vows to never tell anyone that when she had diarrhea she fell right over into it. The presence of the monster though it what was impressive. King has gone the way of Lovecraft in crafting this monster. We never really get to see it. We see evidence of it – trees ripped up, disemboweled corpses of deer and the creepy, watched feeling that Trisha has sometimes. Once, she fell asleep and woke up with a circle around her that was scraped into the earth. I liked the effect.
    • 2/5
      Trish McFarland, a nine-year-old girl goes hiking with her mother and brother. While these two are engaged in conversation, Trish leaves the trail and becomes hopelessly lost in the woods. The more she tries to find her way out, the more upset and injured she becomes. Meanwhile, there’s something or someone who keeps watching her. As Trish’s physical state deteriorates, she imagines (or was it really her imagination) that Tom Gordon is giving her hints for survival.Not too much happens in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Where’s the imaginative story I’ve come to expect from the author? This book was rather boring. I couldn’t wait for Trish to get out of the woods. That wasn’t from fear, but rather from the tedious story. It was neither funny nor frightening. I think the author can do better. I must add, though, that I liked the author’s postscript. As a matter of fact, I liked it better than the novel.
    • 4/5
      Juni 1998.Patricia "Trisha" McFarland på 9 år er på en udflugt med sin mor Quilla Andersen og sin storebror Pete McFarland. Forældrene blev skilt for et år siden. Quilla har lært Trisha visse basale regler om hvordan man overlever på egen hånd i naturen og det viser sig praktisk, da Trisha går lidt for sig selv og forvilder sig bort fra stien. Hun bliver skræmt af en slange, falder og mister orienteringen. Det skulle bare være en kort udflugt, så hun har gummisko og nogenlunde fornuftigt tøj på, men ikke noget af det udstyr man ville tage med på en dagslang tur i ødemarken. Trisha er vældig glad for baseball og for sin far, og dem tænker hun meget på, mens hun følger en strømmende flod nedad og ud af skoven. Desværre er hun også hurtigt ude af det område, der bliver eftersøgt.Hun er ikke helt tabt bag en vogn, så hun spiser bregner (fiddleheads) og smører mudder på myggestik og senere over det hele for at slippe for flere bid og stik. Men hun drikker også af vandet i floden og får diarre og opkastninger som tak. Hun synes også at hun bliver forfulgt af noget, måske en stor bjørn. Hun finder checkerberries og beechnuts og får fra nu af følgeskab af en imaginær Tom Gordon. Feber og lungebetændelse følger.Imens er forældrene ved at miste håbet som dagene går uden at hun er fundet.Til sidst kommer hun ud af skovene, desværre med en bjørn/uhyre/gud i hælene. En krybskytte skræmmer bjørnen væk og redder Trisha.Hun bliver genforenet med forældrene på hospitalet og alt er godt.Udmærket roman, men handlingen kan stå på et frimærke.
    • 5/5
      Definitely one of the better Kings I've read - short and sweet, just walking the line between realism and King's brand of cosmic supernatural, and plenty realistically terrifying. It kinda makes me wish I liked baseball.
    • 4/5
      Nine year old Trisha gets lost in the woods. But these aren't just any old woods. These are the woods of Stephen King, and of course, that means something spooky has to be in there too! And it is! But Trisha's love for the Boston Red Sox, and their closer Tom Gordon, keeps her going and going. I had fun reading this and I totally geeked out by using an actual Tom Gordon baseball card as my book mark!
    • 4/5
      Not as exciting as the other books I've read by Stephen King. This one is a very mild read, and the creepy, scary bit might not be so creepy depending on how you interpret it. If you want a fast, easy Stephen King book that won't give you nightmares, this is a great pick, but if you are looking for the thrill of his darker work, this one may be very dull. I enjoyed the wilderness survival aspect of this book a lot, but the baseball references got a bit hard to follow. I'd have liked just a bit more narrative assistance to help me understand the baseball stuff as it applied to the story, cause otherwise those segments were just meaningless filler for me as someone who doesn't follow baseball and know the jargon.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      It was a short book but it took my months to finish because I had to force myself to keep reading it and I just couldn’t get into it.
    • 4/5
      Amazingly my stepdaughter gave me a Stephen King book, that I haven't read, for Christmas. A nine year old girl gets totally lost while hiking. Her Mom and older brother were too busy arguing too notice. We get to experience her struggles including what's going on in her head. One of her coping mechanisms is to invoke Tom Gordon, her favorite Red Sox player along for the ride. She encounters all sorts of terrain, including bogs and rocky hills. She scrounges for whatever she can find to eat and water to drink with some horrendous digestive consequences! And, oh yeah, there is that unidentified monster stalking her along the way. It is always a treat to experience the character's thoughts and join them on a familiar yet not so normal journey that Mr. King is so good at describing! You just never know where he'll take you next!
    • 4/5
      Scariest story I've ever read about a girl who gets lost in the woods.
    • 4/5
      This book was very suspenseful and thought provoking. The story is a psychological study of saving yourself under cruel conditions. King creates a 9 year old character who is likable, charmingly, and totally believable.. The baseball metaphor and Anne Heche's truly brilliant performance further enhance the narrative. However; there is an unexpected, ill-fitting musical interlude at the end of each "inning". Good job SK.
    • 4/5
      A terrific book. Very little use of standard King heebie-jeebies. An excellent book inside the head of a little girl lost in the woods. I really enjoyed this and read it in one sitting.
    • 4/5
      Book on CD performed by Anne Heche

      A young girl who loves baseball (and particularly one Red Sox player) takes a few steps off the path when on a hike through the Appalachian Trail with her mother and older brother. In the blink of an eye, she is lost and trying very hard not to be terrified.

      King is a master craftsman and he is never better than when playing on all our childhood (and adult) fears, magnifying them tenfold and letting his (and our) imagination carry us away.

      I loved Trisha McFarland! She’s resilient, intelligent, and brave. She’s also young and makes some wrong decisions which get her farther into trouble. (Number one rule of being lost in the woods – STOP moving, stay put and wait for rescue … but if she’d followed that rule there wouldn’t be much to the novel.)

      I grew up going camping with my family. We slept out in the open (no tent), though we usually had a tarp of some kind to keep off the rain. But I don’t think I could fare half so well as young Trisha did. She remembered a science class that helped her, and lessons her mother imparted on other nature hikes helped her forage for a few berries or edible ferns.

      This is not to say that she had an easy time of it. The “tough tootsie” voice in her head definitely shoots holes in each theory and idea Trisha has, filling her with doubt and increasing her fears. The noises and violence of nature can be frightening and shocking to anyone, let alone a nine-year-old town girl, not accustomed to such experiences. It’s easy to imagine boogie men and monsters lurking in the dark (not to mention the real dangers of snakes, poisonous plants and predators). The best thing she did, however, was keep her spirits up by relying on her beloved Tom Gordon, the Red Sox “closer.” It was those “conversations,” and using her Walkman to listen to the ball games, that sustained her and gave her hope and courage.

      Anne Heche did a marvelous job of performing the audio version. She knocked it out of the park! 5**** for her narration.
    • 3/5
      If you have already watched one chapter of Bear Grylls' Man vs. Wild, then you'll be quite familiar with this book, because it is basically Man vs. Wild with a nine year old (and too tall for her age) girl. Or, if you already took a peek on Stephen King's recent book In the Tall Grass, it basically this plus Blockade Billy, which is not necessarily bad. As usual, the experience of little Trisha are quite vivid and the way King wrote the story reminded me a bit of The Long Walk.
      I think that this book wasn't so bad, but I still missed a bit of the "real Stephen King element" in the story. You know, the psychological games, a bit more of family drama (which was going pretty nice, but was only shown in small flashes, the main focus being on Trisha's adventures in the woods). The element I was expecting to see more often, which was the scenes with Tom Gordon, could have appeared more often. I think I was hoping to see stronger bonds between Trisha and the Tom Gordon that lived in her mind. I don't know, perhaps some more interaction?

      This book definitely wasn't King's best book, but it was a very good one nevertheless.

    Book preview

    The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - Stephen King

    ;^ebook_preview_excerpt.html}\ێFe!1f0 -_ZWYdV.I1.O27_DD&Y-A"q%txw&sc-E }]qCW<weǢ+0]>S1վ8:|Ewm]_ޏc=u]OĤOW~cqC2zI|džgw?~_UXULE*%ŹWXexWe9׾/"xvcz7"xWنT@~)/h?x-io)kѻ!.#P}ݽ`4ɧ싷Xcʩ)}_G `nW-^yݛ\emhWw; m7 iӒц8=Cub)|#_52lBhC݃Z?qgObяMNpBKb@z8A;s|Z,dill^=5G#tC{i;XNGLu1WÓ?~DPz0]V}M8]v=(a@xCP1/ca8,VDGԐsk30,oQ= 9QLX>3\ 65kƫЦwxDۄf`j1QfY\L)/G3??a:c25anw$swi j?{THF/[[Ǡ؂_L6QDމܪFma:x.MyR#*/rvvu$Nane؇B'6,UyOY.9[^;`ōiuPtmG?qH@ԇ34gqXZ6~\[lh祶-[ "GDKl\tx0属Un:VF|Z5a,j;E`!Yo$P_bP-׊bÄSx<8q_[x= F9Rǩni~! 0Kh4Xv+5#| 7:"8tf2'b2}3O߹ T]Yft'ۯ0KF1a[&i"8`O<0O g8RAcReLђE{1!a?aB,JiyɘqeuO]`" şxp+ͬ! &18XW5tDjęr]qXbNj)'K{HEw5GxH<2}]uK_ծw5^[|x1`#!"fĒ%*.]H›Ѓ re(ނ4z`<5y|GGg9FD UVkmR LXQsMn'bSȧFZdxq>(H͡I''kS8*X!Jc&K:a|@%FWݴm8S2GJUH&c ^x+閦%ۭ@"iʉ2pSQ &zZҵs`[+4qkQ\:h/y\q_Hv%!6\}eQr+9}G&%(](LPOM9W0e@"eǂVN ,NF'lD< +kE q;K@ObEIC!&!Qw$ȲTurҪe Y3R[4)C/]v򾔬B@w #9 T֠x+#vv"7CnML,t! {'tǞY8shJSW+*FcQM~ދs+gYVx jfa@kÉa]4xj.emJh>cp%,޷N5&,M5-&rrLN &rR~3LIX,Iq.O m@gك3O.+7yǔ'TɧЮ$o0= &i=-M0#rm3c6 .ja5sI)iz "&d u!L~^q$UU49x(MN}V:Y$,vNCFe`^ԣZn5+k41ܻh>"|֥ y.3U^B~WJ~TSp/uW 2&rVtͩ|!h*%/Il-HL!.R{ IyOY3(<01;GB^AĔMF{Id5i!lk D/3ګ O. ɌnO,jR]A)^C5Aj.8тs69l=QX`i$9MDײh${T񌁅ewoRR'*?5ဈuA#pWjSʘKjC@i주+sQ42o4 QR?85Ҝv5mk'sC!?ūo1D A$h<~i넕+("i ޝb}M^ D79N]bהƼFFQ7̢|&RH !L )PIq΀Jk]g&[l:@٠dB՜R]8y1%R`%0$4h&0NTL7lJ7{Ga)q?J=I҃GSrn$W#ɹ:5|8b?;j%KHu562m9=YH|@nKF)ժ靘=DA:˺.Ha0@ͩ i 3hum~L5@KmL&4V$L,/ñ䡞N$ֵe:UP_=SVM^zK3UOa ijwEj'j|Z{8D5`Z] yn2UթV,4%؂W.wcaqt _B`e/ۘbKWpj^h*E3}hXgͱc.U&xFfHlIfnRw[#@O9l1>*>Xw a"C󘥳L%8V8͊R d[1:׮=i#4.aO|񹥋̉]XFD?a'-qLg5ĕ>wim4B,'fDٖVXP \ s[B: x+-t+6֊55 K7x]S]TVN"MT Qcj^NFj<6Ҁet!eN2NW3B(>QZv(A&M!7CTZ:*P&K,ԺA[ҍe *ϡSdd=K.ɇ=6Om]DaFR Jk ˔䠂Ӓ&SUtor6<>٪w+oα|BzlȉF `%1 If`dӁ-|(6cWQֹ.yQLm;9KqS=IL((ES/xnN2x2չG"UՇ Ĕo9M/ ![ii#V?S^L-/w' i\ Doz$%'*|s.[>hvڍDY&*ԧ/@ &~T]hx'2v 2ٶrǒ\~.ۄ\ViUikYa.gqUғ|{Ss+M^ϗr6䈩ӧT&ޥA$[Z|fo1An x$vkJ\ z|'Q͎qݵc1fsgd۫t@/ϱ)a\tap$L&v|8hdYk.y ^@qG +{ߠګ&}ĢXN*Wo^7+~{pK[F7B7Gmh]6iMNVO4ѴC)fQѠ<ѧs^ւj$iD&ﲚhti,jC=` rB,ޯzS4#_szZ.e'4nMZAJ4}4ibZ7bEA:K*G/K91I9BNQECȌJzɴfNI1S1:_zGRNX3΃ "F*L]Y*?J kvQ?$E&pheح]ߓ\YdNӯ6:@/qZ )wy2V$+,v[N*V2g+޽x;kob82Xy1$Ě1S4 bن`8pt)M5H/qZIUJa)%z"W(:@n"*W7ҤBACunuҙyl< R=OlupcgTU5 7\3[D7~A̱mp@tQccs=xnwa*IWH8Fnį8J/) 枥 Vt}Fۡ5$ XKvq~# kpYyoD.V=Ûk"c0S]^fL;c,%-)v|$"CϢ7g>m4ﬥY;?:.n h68IO O_c߾y_R+\lJ 0^K>KeJ(&|^?U55{p;8i*nwZ[vN&mI F%^OrrtϞpM|rgϐH'psr]OWnfeIT#mz?{Djta)0\O1}8Y8{9l䵦MUs;N؞G$=2F,pP\=2EnK8+RL~UR[zWI;ZΛ4陶_v!\icO@Г}R=nG
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1