The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Novel

By Stephen King

The acclaimed #1 New York Times bestseller from Stephen King. A uniquely frightening thriller about a young girl lost in the woods as night falls, with only the voice of her beloved Red Sox relief pitcher to sustain her and help her survive—maybe.

During a six-mile hike on the Maine–New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland escapes the tension between her older brother and recently divorced mother. But when she strays off the path, she descends into a terrifying nightmare. Alone in the deep forest, Trisha must face the raw power of nature, with only her imagination, courage, and wits.

Drawing strength from her Walkman, Trisha finds comfort in Red Sox broadcasts and the imagined companionship of her idol, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. As the signal fades, she conjures visions of Gordon guiding her, even as she senses a darker presence nearby.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribner
• Release date: Jul 15, 1999
• ISBN: 9780684835839

Stephen King

Stephen King es autor de más de sesenta libros, todos ellos best sellers internacionales. Sus títulos más recientes son Holly, Cuento de Hadas, Billy Summers, Después, La sangre manda, El Instituto, Elevación, El visitante (cuya adaptaciónaudiovisual se estrenó en HBO en enero de 2020), La caja de botones de Gwendy (con Richard Chizmar), Bellas durmientes (con su hijo Owen King), El bazar de los malos sueños, la trilogía «Bill Hodges» (Mr. Mercedes, Quien pierde paga y Fin de guardia), Revival y Doctor Sueño.La novela 22/11/63 (convertida en serie de televisión en Hulu) fue elegida por The New York Times Book Review como una de las diez mejores novelas de 2011 y por Los Angeles Times como la mejor novela de intriga del año. Los libros de la serie «La Torre Oscura» e It han sido adaptados al cine, así como gran parte de sus clásicos, desde Misery hasta El resplandor pasando por Carrie, El juego de Gerald y La zona muerta. En reconocimiento a su trayectoria profesional, le han sido concedidos los premios PEN American Literary Service Award en 2018, National Medal of Arts en 2014 y National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters en 2003. Vive en Bangor, Maine, con su esposa Tabitha King, también novelista.

Book preview

JUNE 1998

Pregame

THE WORLD had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. Trisha McFarland discovered this when she was nine years old. At ten o’clock on a morning in early June she was sitting in the back seat of her mother’s Dodge Caravan, wearing her blue Red Sox batting practice jersey (the one with 36 GORDON on the back) and playing with Mona, her doll. At ten thirty she was lost in the woods. By eleven she was trying not to be terrified, trying not to let herself think, This is serious, this is very serious. Trying not to think that sometimes when people got lost in the woods they got seriously hurt. Sometimes they died.

All because I needed to pee, she thought… except she hadn’t needed to pee all that badly, and in any case she could have asked Mom and Pete to wait up the trail a minute while she went behind a tree. They were fighting again, gosh what a surprise that was, and that was why she had dropped behind a little bit, and without saying anything. That was why she had stepped off the trail and behind a high stand of bushes. She needed a breather, simple as that. She was tired of listening to them argue, tired of trying to sound bright and cheerful, close to screaming at her mother, Let him go, then! If he wants to go back to Malden and live with Dad so much, why don’t you just let him? I’d drive him myself if I had a license, just to get some peace and quiet around here! And what then? What would her mother say then? What kind of look would come over her face? And Pete. He was older, almost fourteen, and not stupid, so why didn’t he know better? Why couldn’t he just give it a rest? Cut the crap was what she wanted to say to him (to both of them, really), just cut the crap.

The divorce had happened a year ago, and their mother had gotten custody. Pete had protested the move from suburban Boston to southern Maine bitterly and at length. Part of it really was wanting to be with Dad, and that was the lever he always used on Mom (he understood with some unerring instinct that it was the one he could plant the deepest and pull on the hardest), but Trisha knew it wasn’t the only reason, or even the biggest one. The real reason Pete wanted out was that he hated Sanford Middle School.

In Malden he’d had it pretty well whipped. He’d run the computer club like it was his own private kingdom; he’d had friends—nerds, yeah, but they went around in a group and the bad kids didn’t pick on them. At Sanford Middle there was no computer club and he’d only made a single friend, Eddie Rayburn. Then in January Eddie moved away, also the victim of a parental breakup. That made Pete a loner, anyone’s game. Worse, a lot of kids laughed at him. He had picked up a nickname which he hated: Pete’s CompuWorld.

On most of the weekends when she and Pete didn’t go down to Malden to be with their father, their mother took them on outings. She was grimly dedicated to these, and although Trisha wished with all her heart that Mom would stop—it was on the outings that the worst fights happened—she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Quilla Andersen (she had taken back her maiden name and you could bet Pete hated that, too) had the courage of her convictions. Once, while staying at the Malden house with Dad, Trisha had heard their father talking to his own Dad on the phone. If Quilla had been at Little Big Horn, the Indians would have lost, he said, and although Trisha didn’t like it when Dad said stuff like that about Mom—it seemed babyish as well as disloyal—she couldn’t deny that there was a nugget of truth in that particular observation.

Over the last six months, as things grew steadily worse between Mom and Pete, she had taken them to the auto museum in Wiscasset, to the Shaker Village in Gray, to The New England Plant-A-Torium in North Wyndham, to Six-Gun City in Randolph, New Hampshire, on a canoe trip down the Saco River, and on a skiing trip to Sugarloaf (where Trisha had sprained her ankle, an injury over which her mother and father had later had a screaming fight; what fun divorce was, what really good fun).

Sometimes, if he really liked a place, Pete would give his mouth a rest. He had pronounced Six-Gun City for babies, but Mom had allowed him to spend most of the visit in the room where the electronic games were, and Pete had gone home not exactly happy but at least silent. On the other hand, if Pete didn’t like one of the places their Mom picked (his least favorite by far had been the Plant-A-Torium; returning to Sanford that day he had been in an especially boogery frame of mind), he was generous in sharing his opinion. Go along to get along wasn’t in his nature. Nor was it in their mother’s, Trisha supposed. She herself thought it was an excellent philosophy, but of course everyone took one look at her and pronounced her her father’s child. Sometimes that bothered her, but mostly she liked it.

Trisha didn’t care where they went on Saturdays, and would have been perfectly happy with a steady diet of amusement parks and mini-golf courses just because they minimized the increasingly horrible arguments. But Mom wanted the trips to be instructive, too—hence the Plant-A-Torium and Shaker Village. On top of his other problems, Pete resented having education rammed down his throat on Saturdays, when he would rather have been up in his room, playing Sanitarium or Riven on his Mac. Once or twice he had shared his opinion (This sucks! pretty well summed it up) so generously that Mom had sent him back to the car and told him to sit there and compose himself until she and Trisha came back.

Trisha wanted to tell Mom she was wrong to treat him like he was a kindergartener who needed a time-out—that someday they’d come back to the van and find it empty, Pete having decided to hitchhike back to Massachusetts—but of course she said nothing. The Saturday outings themselves were wrong, but Mom would never accept that. By the end of some of them Quilla Andersen looked at least five years older than when they had set out, with deep lines grooved down the sides of her mouth and one hand constantly rubbing her temple, as if she had a headache… but she would still never stop. Trisha knew it. Maybe if her mother had been at Little Big Horn the Indians still would have won, but the body-count would have been considerably higher.

This week’s outing was to an unincorporated township in the western part of the state. The Appalachian Trail wound through the area on its way to New Hampshire. Sitting at the kitchen table the night before, Mom had shown them photos from a brochure. Most of the pictures showed happy hikers either striding along a forest trail or standing at scenic lookouts, shading their eyes and peering across great wooded valleys at the time-eroded but still formidable peaks of the central White Mountains.

Pete sat at the table, looking cataclysmically bored, refusing to give the brochure more than a glance. For her part, Mom had refused to notice his ostentatious lack of interest. Trisha, as was increasingly her habit, became brightly enthusiastic. These days she often sounded to herself like a contestant on a TV game show, all but peeing in her pants at the thought of winning a set of waterless cookware. And how did she feel to herself these days? Like glue holding together two pieces of something that was broken. Weak glue.

Quilla had closed the brochure and turned it over. On the back was a map. She tapped a snaky blue line. This is Route 68, she said. We’ll park the car here, in this parking lot. She tapped a little blue square. Now she traced one finger along a snaky red line. This is the Appalachian Trail between Route 68 and Route 302 in North Conway, New Hampshire. It’s only six miles, and rated Moderate. Well… this one little section in the middle is marked Moderate-to-Difficult, but not to the point where we’d need climbing gear or anything.

She tapped another blue square. Pete was leaning his head on one hand, looking the other way. The heel of his palm had pulled the left side of his mouth up into a sneer. He had started getting pimples this year and a fresh crop gleamed on his forehead. Trisha loved him, but sometimes—last night at the kitchen table, as Mom explained their route, for example—she hated him, too. She wanted to tell him to stop being a chicken, because that was what it came down to when you cut to the chase, as their Dad said. Pete wanted to run back to Malden with his little teenage tail between his legs because he was a chicken. He didn’t care about Mom, didn’t care about Trisha, didn’t even care if being with Dad would be good for him in the long run. What Pete cared about was not having anyone to eat lunch with on the gym bleachers. What Pete cared about was that when he walked into homeroom after the first bell someone always yelled, Hey CompuWorld! Howya doon, homo-boy?

This is the parking lot where we come out, Mom had said, either not noticing that Pete wasn’t looking at the map or pretending not to. A van shows up there around three. It’ll take us back around to our car. Two hours later we’re home again, and I’ll haul you guys to a movie if we’re not too tired. How does that sound?

Pete had said nothing last night, but he’d had plenty to say this morning, starting with the ride up from Sanford. He didn’t want to do this, it was ultimately stupid, plus he’d heard it was going to rain later on, why did they have to spend a whole Saturday walking in the woods during the worst time of the year for bugs, what if Trisha got poison ivy (as if he cared), and on and on and on. Yatata-yatata-yatata. He even had the gall to say he should be home studying for his final exams. Pete had never studied on Saturday in his life, as far as Trisha knew. At first Mom didn’t respond, but finally he began getting under her skin. Given enough time, he always did. By the time they got to the little dirt parking area on Route 68, her knuckles were white on the steering wheel and she was speaking in clipped tones which Trisha recognized all too well. Mom was leaving Condition Yellow behind and going to Condition Red. It was looking like a very long six-mile walk through the western Maine woods, all in all.

At first Trisha had tried to divert them, exclaiming over barns and grazing horses and picturesque graveyards in her best oh-wow-it’s-waterless-cookware voice, but they ignored her and after awhile she had simply sat in the back seat with Mona on her lap (her Dad liked to call Mona Moanie Balogna) and her knapsack beside her, listening to them argue and wondering if she herself might cry, or actually go crazy. Could your family fighting all the time drive you crazy? Maybe when her mother started rubbing her temples with the tips of her fingers, it wasn’t because she had a headache but because she was trying to keep her brains from undergoing spontaneous combustion or explosive decompression, or something.

To escape them, Trisha opened the door to her favorite fantasy. She took off her Red Sox cap and looked at the signature written across the brim in broad black felt-tip strokes; this helped get her in the mood. It was Tom Gordon’s signature. Pete liked Mo Vaughn, and their Mom was partial to Nomar Garciaparra, but Tom Gordon was Trisha’s and her Dad’s favorite Red Sox player. Tom Gordon was the Red Sox closer; he came on in the eighth or ninth inning when the game was close but the Sox were still on top. Her Dad admired Gordon because he never seemed to lose his nerve—Flash has got icewater in his veins, Larry McFarland liked to say—and Trisha always said the same thing, sometimes adding that she liked Gordon because he had the guts to throw a curve on three-and-oh (this was something her father had read to her in a Boston Globe column). Only to Moanie Balogna and (once) to her girlfriend, Pepsi Robichaud, had she said more. She told Pepsi she thought Tom Gordon was pretty good-looking. To Mona she threw caution entirely to the winds, saying that Number 36 was the handsomest man alive, and if he ever touched her hand she’d faint. If he ever kissed her, even on the cheek, she thought she’d probably die.

Now, as her mother and her brother fought in the front seat—about the outing, about Sanford Middle School, about their dislocated life—Trisha looked at the signed cap her Dad had somehow gotten her in March, just before the season started, and thought this:

I’m in Sanford Park, just walking across the playground to Pepsi’s house on an ordinary day. And there’s this guy standing at the hotdog wagon. He’s wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt and he’s got a gold chain around his neck—he’s got his back to me but I can see the chain winking in the sun. Then he turns around and I see… oh I can’t believe it but it’s true, it’s really him, it’s Tom Gordon, why he’s in Sanford is a mystery but it’s him, all right, and oh God his eyes, just like when he’s looking in for the sign with men on base, those eyes, and he smiles and says he’s a little lost, he wonders if I know a town called North Berwick, how to get there, and oh God, oh my God I’m shaking, I won’t be able to say a word, I’ll open my mouth and nothing will come out but a little dry squeak, what Dad calls a mousefart, only when I try I can speak, I sound almost normal, and I say…

I say, he says, then I say and then he says: thinking about how they might talk while the fighting in the front seat of the Caravan drew steadily farther away. (Sometimes, Trisha had decided, silence was life’s greatest blessing.) She was still looking fixedly at the signature on the visor of her baseball cap when Mom turned into the parking area, still far away (Trish is off in her own world was how her father put it), unaware that there were teeth hidden in the ordinary texture of things and she would soon know it. She was in Sanford, not in TR-90. She was in the town park, not at an entry-point to the Appalachian Trail. She was with Tom Gordon, Number 36, and he was offering to buy her a hotdog in exhange for directions to North Berwick.

Oh, bliss.

First Inning

MOM AND PETE gave it a rest as they got their packs and Quilla’s wicker plant-collection basket out of the van’s back end; Pete even helped Trisha get her pack settled evenly on her back, tightening one of the straps, and she had a moment’s foolish hope that now things were going to be all right.

Kids got your ponchos? Mom asked, looking up at the sky. There was still blue up there, but the clouds were thickening in the west. It very likely would rain, but probably not soon enough for Pete to have a satisfying whine about being soaked.

I’ve got mine, Mom! Trisha chirruped in her oh-boy-waterless-cookware voice.

Pete grunted something that might have been yes.

Lunches?

Affirmative from Trisha; another low grunt from Pete.

Good, because I’m not sharing mine. She locked the Caravan, then led them across the dirt lot toward a sign marked TRAIL WEST, with an arrow beneath. There were maybe a dozen other cars in the lot, all but theirs with out-of-state plates.

Bug-spray? Mom asked as they stepped onto the path leading to the trail. Trish?

Got it! she chirruped, not entirely positive she did but not wanting to stop with her back turned so that Mom could have a rummage. That would get Pete going again for sure. If they kept walking, though, he might see something which would interest him, or at least distract him. A raccoon. Maybe a deer. A dinosaur would be good. Trisha giggled.

What’s funny? Mom asked.

Just me thinks, Trisha replied, and Quilla frowned—me thinks was a Larry McFarland-ism. Well let her frown, Trisha thought. Let her frown all she wants. I’m with her, and I don’t complain about it like old grouchy there, but he’s still my Dad and I still love him.

Trisha touched the brim of her signed cap, as if to prove it.

Okay, kids, let’s go, Quilla said. And keep your eyes open.

I hate this, Pete almost groaned—it was the first clearly articulated thing he’d said since they got out of the van, and Trisha thought: Please God, send something. A deer or a dinosaur or a UFO. Because if You don’t, they’re going right back at it.

God sent nothing but a few mosquito scouts that would no doubt soon be reporting back to the main army that fresh meat was on the move, and by the time they passed a sign reading NO. CONWAY STATION 5.5 MI., the two of them were at it full-bore again, ignoring the woods, ignoring her, ignoring everything but each other. Yatata-yatata-yatata. It was, Trisha thought, like some sick kind of making out.

It was a shame, too, because they were missing stuff that was actually pretty neat. The sweet, resiny smell of the pines, for instance, and the way the clouds seemed so close—less like clouds than like draggles of whitish-gray smoke. She guessed you’d have to be an adult to call something as boring as walking one of your hobbies, but this really wasn’t bad. She didn’t know if the entire Appalachian Trail was as well-maintained as this—probably not—but if it was, she guessed she could understand why people with nothing better to do decided to walk all umpty-thousand miles of it. Trisha thought it was like

Reviews for The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

[candacevan_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not terribly frightening story about a nine-year-old girl lost in the woods. Well-written and suspenseful.

[murphyjesus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A quick read, but it really displays how well King can write from the perspective of a child.

[alison · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a great content nice one liked it a lot

[David Taquet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[Victoria Pennetta · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[Andrea Ruiz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[jennysbookbag.com · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[kslade-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not bad survival/horror story. Strange bear / demon creature turns up at the end. Mostly enjoyed it.

[bookczuk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For years this was my favorite Stephen King (after his book on writing) though my husband claimed it was a Stephen King for wimps. Hmph. Now, 25 years after its publication and my first reading of it, I’m rereading it. The years since 1999 have brought a lot my way, both good and really crappy, and I could have used a baseball hero standing beside me. Instead, I have had books to accompany the journey through the years. This one retains a place as one of my favorites of Mr King’s.

Purchased during our pre Philly book crawl exploration of local Independent Booksellers. We hit the stores in the weeks ahead of the crawl, to avoid crowds.

[quickmind · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[tobinelliott · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Going through this re-read is a fascinating experience. Books I remember loving the first time around, I'm only okay with this time around. Others that didn't do as much for me the first time around, I'm digging far more this time.

This, unfortunately was more the first one. I remember thinking this one, while not mind-blowing, was a really good one.

It's still good, but I think I can now pinpoint the precise point where King lost the ability to write a convincing child. Here. With this book.

Trish is a fun character, and I loved how King made her survive more due to her common sense than through some weirdly acquired survival skills. She's tenacious and she's interesting enough to hold the reader's attention.

However, King swings wildly between having her think like a young kid still in the single digits age, then shifting way over to a child who's point of view uses words like indecorous. She thinks about things like when the longest days of the year are, which—at least to me—are more the thoughts of, say, an author in his early fifties.

This way-off-the-mark narration and dialogue will, at least as of this writing in 2024, reach its zenith (or nadir, depending on your point of view) with FAIRY TALE and the utterly deplorable portrayal of 17-year-old Charlie Reade, a teenager who's a solid forty years out of date when it comes to expressions and thoughts.

But overall, the story was gripping. Trisha's plight was real, and awful, and King does his usual brilliant job of ratcheting up the tension.

I have complaints, primarily over the unseen threat hinted at throughout the novel. I would have loved to have seen King lean into the supernatural aspect harder, especially toward the end.

I also wouldn't have minded more cutaways to the parents and brother, and the manhunt.

So yeah, overall? Not a bad story, but not a great one. Kinda right in the middle.

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[paulagalvan-323293 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is a novella compared to King's other works—only 224 pages. It's the horrifying story of Tricia McFarland, a nine-year-old getting lost in the woods for nine days. Being a baseball fan (as is King), she imagines Tom Gordon, a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, as her companion through the end days. It's not as scary as some of his others, but a quick, entertaining read.

[dwcofer_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

What is worse than reading 200 pages about a girl lost in the woods? Not much. This was such a boring story, it was difficult to finish. You can only drag out a story so far about a girl lost in the woods before it becomes tiresome and boring.

The story follows nine-year old Trisha McFarland who is with her mother and brother on a nature hike and are arguing with each other and not paying attention to Trisha who is lagging behind them. Trisha has to go to the bathroom badly, so she wanders off into a wooded area to take care of her business, but somehow, she wanders too far and becomes lost in the woods for days on end. How someone could wander that far off from the pathway is incredulous to start with, but how her brother and mother could be paying so little attention to her that they do not notice for a long time that she is no longer with them, is stretching reality.

Almost the entire book is the story of Trisha’s survival in the woods, which became tedious after a while. Even the ending was not a surprise. You know she would eventually be found and rescued.

I enjoy most of King’s books, but this one really fell short and missed the mark.

[stahl2ricco · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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!

[Jen Nie · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

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.

[buffalogr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[MagalyProcopio · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's the survival story of a nine-year-old girl who ends up getting lost in a forest. King's descriptions never fail, and in this story, he creates the entire atmosphere to take us to that forest. We know everything that Trisha thinks and how she acts given the circumstances she faces; she is a very smart girl who found something to cling to in baseball ⚾️ to avoid falling into despair. (Translated from Spanish)

[JorgeLopez · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A book full of adventure but above all full of supernatural elements that a girl experiences in the forest. Very captivating. (Translated from Spanish)

[C.E.Secaira · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of Patricia (Trisha) McFarland, a girl about to turn 10 who, with her mother and brother, takes a short weekend hike on the Appalachian trails in the part corresponding to the state of Maine.

The girl's parents recently divorced, and the mother tries to ensure her two children, Trisha and Pete, have good times every weekend by taking them out to different places. Her brother Pete resented and hated these outings because he just wanted to be with his friends and his father, who lived in another state.

As they start the hike, the three are on a trail, and the mother and son discuss various topics as usual, especially arguing because Pete disagreed with having to pay for their parents' mistakes. At that moment, Trisha needs to pee, moves away from her brother and mother, who pay her no attention at all, and ventures into the woods to hide from all eyes, getting further and further away. This is where her adventure in the forests of Maine begins (she even crosses into New Hampshire), and all of this turns into a survival lesson where, thanks to the contents of her backpack, her walkman, baseball, and her willpower, the involuntary journey becomes a life lesson.

Personally, I really enjoy the narration, Trisha's adventures, her fanaticism for baseball, and that her favorite player, Tom Gordon, accompanies her in her mind throughout her journey.

For those of us who have some understanding of how a baseball game unfolds and its rules, it is interesting when Trisha manages to pick up a radio through her walkman and hear the commentary of a Boston Red Sox game, the team where Thomas (Tom) Flynn Gordon, her favorite baseball player, plays. However, for people who are not fans of this sport, everything related to it may seem boring.

Unlike most readers, I personally liked this book a lot; I found it interesting and different from what King usually offers. There is a part that has a bit of horror, especially during Trisha's nights in the woods.

The ending is quite interesting; I liked it a lot. I would recommend this book; it is short and reads quite quickly; however, you need to like baseball to enjoy it fully and have lived during the time it is set (the year 1998) since several things that were trendy at that time are mentioned.

4.5/5 (Translated from Spanish)

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[bookconcierge · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[aryadeschain-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[umamh12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was very suspenseful and thought provoking. Was what she saw real? Was it a bear or evil spirits? If it was the bear, why did he spare her life?

[steadfastreader · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The getting lost in the woods part is so descriptive it made me itch as I was reading it... or maybe I'm just WAAAY open to suggestion.

[jaime83 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In this book by Stephen King, there are too many negative reviews. I honestly don't think it's one of the worst books he's written. I liked it and it hooked me. Easy to read. (Translated from Spanish)

[GeorgeFireball · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The world has teeth and could eat you at any moment. A great novella by King, it slipped into my favorites from the first page. Suspense very well achieved and that unique flavor that only the King knows how to season. (Translated from Spanish)

[AnnTarditti · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's a quite entertaining story to read; I liked it and found it easy to immerse myself in Trisha's world. It's easy and quick to read, with the typical baseball touches that reminded me of Blockade Billy at times, another lovely book by King! (Translated from Spanish)

[algoconpatas · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Short but captivating novel, not one of my favorites, but I believe it manages to grab the reader's attention and clearly has the perfect touch of psychological horror so characteristic of King. (Translated from Spanish)

[placebo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A tense and claustrophobic novel.
And yes, it seems ironic since the entire novel takes place outdoors - in a forest - but it is not. The feeling that you cannot escape from that enormous forest - so huge that it seems endless - makes it claustrophobic. The intuition or belief that someone is watching you is also very frightening.
I can't even imagine what the protagonist must have felt, who should not be forgotten is a 9-year-old girl.

A short novel that is enjoyable from beginning to end. It hasn't seemed to me the best of King, but as always, thanks to his characters and the author's prose, it reads quickly and hooks you. (Translated from Spanish)