Careful Where You Wander [Essay]

Stephen King is, without a doubt, one of my favorite authors. I own everything he’s ever written—well, everything except for that Holly crap—and have read everything in his catalog at least once. With so many great novels under his belt, it’s hard to pick just one as my favorite, so I won’t. No, I won’t call “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon” my favorite King book, but I will say if you’ve never read anything of his before, that’s where you should start. This chilling story about a little girl getting lost in the Appalachian wilderness runs just over two hundred pages and is the perfect introduction to King’s work.

The book begins with our hero, nine-year-old Trisha, going for a hike with her mother and brother. Her mother and brother get into a fight over the mother and father’s recent divorce, and so they don’t notice when Trisha falls behind. Trisha wanders off to take a whiz in the woods and then tries to cut through the trees to catch back up to her mother and brother; however, soon after going off the trail, she realizes she’s lost. Trisha begins ambling through the woods aimlessly, trying to find her way back with only her Walkman—which she uses to listen to baseball games and news about her ongoing rescue—to keep her company. Unbeknownst to her, she is moving away from the search party that has begun trying to find her. Eventually she comes upon a river, which she decides to follow, hoping it will lead her to a town. The girl follows the stream into a swamp, where she comes upon an island of fiddlehead ferns. Low on supplies and desperate for food, Trisha eats a few handfuls of the ferns. Before moving on further into the swamp, Trisha comes upon the severed head of a deer, which is infested with flies. Now certain that something is out there with her, she presses on, eventually making it out of the swamp. A few days later, tired and delirious from bad food, tainted water, and a growing illness, Trisha hallucinates an encounter with a robed being that has a swarm of wasps covering its face. It warns Trisha of a coming confrontation with the God of the Lost. Trisha carries on, eventually finding a road, which she follows until dark. She happens to come upon a car, which she decides to spend the night in. During the night she becomes certain the God of the Lost is outside stalking her, even believing herself to have caught several glimpses of it. In the morning Trisha wakes to find that something has drawn a circle in the dirt around the car as if marking her as its own. Trisha continues down the road, becoming ever more certain that she is going to die of exhaustion. When she’s sure she can’t make it any further, a bear comes out of the woods and approaches Trisha. Sure that this is the God of the Lost, she decides to face it down, readying herself to launch a baseball into its face. As Trisha lets the ball fly, a hunter comes upon the situation and pops a cap in the bear, scaring it off. The book ends with Trisha later waking up in a hospital room with her family waiting for her.

The thing I appreciated the most about “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon” is that I really didn’t know if Trisha would make it out in the end. The book paints an extremely bleak picture of her scenario, letting you know from the beginning that the odds are not in her favor. Near the end it becomes almost certain that Trisha will succumb to the elements. The inclusion of a supernatural element with the God of the Lost is entirely unnecessary; the truly scary part of the book is the harsh reality of being lost alone in the woods. I think that King’s choice to leave the nature of the God of the Lost vague was the right one, something you will rarely hear me say; generally I think vagueness in horror is an excuse for lazy world building. It is never stated for sure that any of the strange things Trisha encounters in the wilderness were real; she could have been hallucinating the whole time.

I struggle to come up with anything negative to say about “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.” In my opinion, it is a nearly flawless book. My only wish is that it was a bit longer. My copy is two hundred eighteen pages; that’s not very much to sink your teeth into. Just as soon as you’re getting into the story, it’s all over.

Stephen King is a horror icon who has produced an entire library’s worth of terrifying tales. With so many to choose from, I can’t pick just one to praise as the best. I’d like to say that it’s “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon,” but what about “The Stand” and “From a Buick 8”? He may have had his fair share of flops, but when King gets it right, he knocks it out of the park. So if you haven’t yet, do yourself a favor and read “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.” It’s one of his best and a perfect little read for the last week of October.