It’s weird. Every time I go home to visit (I am from PA) I end up reading a lot of Stephen King books. I read this one when it first came out, but realized I never posted a review of it. This weekend was dark and rainy and cloudy and it was a perfect setting to read about Trisha and her adventures lost in the woods on the Appalachian Trail. I always wonder what happened next with Trisha and her family. I can guess, but I still would like to think in the end, they had their own happy ending (or as happy as King allows it to be).
“The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon” follows 9 year old Trisha McFarland and her mother and brother as they go hiking in the woods in Maine/New Hampshire boundaries. Ah Maine, still creepy as anything and I still want to visit you. Trisha’s older brother Pete is fighting with their mom and his resentment of his mother and father’s divorce ends up being the focus of the argument. The two of them don’t realize that they have lost Trisha as she stopped. And just like that, the story follows Trisha as she is lost in the woods with only her imagination (or is it) of her hero Tom Gordon while listening to Boston Red Sox’s games.
I always say that King can write kids in horror like no one’s business. He writes them as kids and when they get to that awful point when they grow up and suddenly become adult. Lost in the woods with something scary/supernatural stalking her, Trisha realizes what went wrong with her parents marriage along with her brother Pete. And as we follow Trisha, we follow the authorities and her family trying to figure out where she is and how to find and save her.
This was a really short novel, but it still works.