The Little Rumple River runs through the north end of Sentry’s Rest (known to the locals as Sentry), and until the year 1996, the year I was born, it was spanned by a wooden bridge. And I was the kid with the shackle clamped around his wrist. Bowditch and the padlocked shed behind his ramshackle old Victorian.īut a thread is easy to break. And now, thinking of those things, I see a clear thread leading up through the years to Mr.

So that’s where I need to start, with the goddamned Sycamore Street Bridge. Only that isn’t the right place, either, because I don’t think my father would have needed a miracle if it hadn’t been for that goddamned bridge. A very ordinary miracle you could say, one that’s happened to many thousands of men and women since 1935, but it seemed like a miracle to a kid. Only that never would have happened except for the miracle that happened to my father. My first thought was with the shed, because that’s where my adventures really began, but then I realized I would have to tell about Mr. My problem-and I’m sure many writers have it, not just newbies like me-is deciding where to start.

Those images released the story I wanted to tell.” ExcerptĬhapter One: The Goddam Bridge. I saw a huge, sprawling palace with glass towers so high their tips pierced the clouds. I saw smashed statues (of what I didn’t know, but I eventually found out). I saw the empty streets, the haunted buildings, a gargoyle head lying overturned in the street.

“As if my imagination had been waiting for the question to be asked, I saw a vast deserted city-deserted but alive. This is a magnificent and terrifying tale in which good is pitted against overwhelming evil, and a heroic boy-and his dog-must lead the battle.Įarly in the Pandemic, King asked himself: “What could you write that would make you happy?” What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it.Ĭharlie starts doing jobs for Mr. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Charlie learned how to take care of himself-and his dad. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink. Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher-for that world or ours.Ĭharlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. A #1 New York Times Bestseller and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice!

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