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Trisha MacFarland is nine years
old, but big for her age. Her mother decides to take both Trisha
and her brother for a hike on the Appalachian Trail in New Hampshire.
As her mother and brother are walking in front of her arguing,
she steps off the trail to take a pee. She goes a little too
far off the trail, not wanting to be seen peeing, and then can’t
remember how to get back. She tumbles down a hill, scraping up
her back and wacks into a log, which unfortunately is a wasp
nest. She gets stung all over the place, and can’t see out
of one eye.
Then there are the mosquitoes and other bugs that
are perpetually flying around her head, just waiting to feast
on her. But the worst of it all is that she is heading deeper
and deeper into the wilderness with very little food in her backpack
and only a radio Walkman for comfort. Here ball favorite player
is the Red Sox closing pitcher Tom Gordon. During her first night
alone, some of her fear is erased by listening to a ballgame
and hearing Tom pull out a save.
But as the days pass, she becomes
very ill from the bad water that she drank. She starts hallucinating
and seeing Tom, who helps her through the bad times. But something
is lurking out there in the woods. Something big. Something that
beheads animals and leaves them for Trisha to find. Something
that is watching her. Something that is following her…and
she knows it.
Unlike a lot of other Stephen
King books, most of the story does not contain anything supernatural.
Most of the story revolves around Trisha’s struggle to survive
in a harsh environment that she just isn’t prepared to experience.
Learning to survive in the wilderness, she gets sick. Tom Gordon
pays her visits during her long hikes and even longer nights,
sometimes standing guard. The only thing really supernatural
in the story is the creature that is stalking her, just waiting
for the right time to pounce.
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