With her mother and her brother arguing too intensely to notice her, nine-year-old Trisha MacFarland veers off the path during a family hike intending just to go to the bathroom and rejoin her family on the trail. But a wrong turn followed by another wrong turn and just like that Trisha is lost. Uncertain what do, and with only a walkman for company, Trisha begins wandering through the dense Maine forest, struggling to fight off hopelessness while listening to her beloved Red Sox on the radio. As her ordeal goes on far too long, Trisha’s mind starts playing tricks on her, and she finds herself accompanied in the woods by her favorite Red Sox player, ace relief pitcher Tom “Flash” Gordon.
Except for a few brief flashes to the hotel room where Trisha’s family waits in horror and to the search party fruitlessly combing the wrong part of the forest, the novel stays with Trisha in the woods. A resourceful little girl, she manages to find food and water and avoid major catastrophes. All along, though, she feels an impending dread personified by a strange inner voice which tells her that something evil is waiting for her in the shadows. Will it catch up to her before she finds her way back to civilization?
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon feels more like a challenge Stephen King set for himself as opposed to a story written to entertain readers. It’s a difficult set-up to be sure. How much drama can you wring from a lost little girl walking alone? Though the dangers inherent in such a situation are inherently obvious, they fail to enthrall on the page. Though King manages to wrap up the story neatly with some emotional connections between, her family, and Tom Gordon himself, by that point too much time has been spent trudging through the forest.
