I got this book a few years ago at a local bookstore and bought it without really knowing anything about it as I didn't know Stephen King wrote the book in 1999. And just got around to reading it this week and I enjoyed it more than I was originally expecting.
The book starts off with the main character, a nine-year old girl named Trisha, who gets lost on the Appalachian Trails after going on a hiking trip with her emotionally unstable mother and brother, who get into a fight that causes Trisha to wander off on her own and gets lost within the endless wilderness. And as the book progresses there is something within the woods that is slowly stalking her as she tries to survive through the harsh wilderness by herself.
It's definitely a little different than what I'm used to with Stephen King, as this book is more about survival than pure horror like most of his early works. And there is a horror element within the book, but it doesn't really appear or make itself known until the final chapters within the book. And your pretty much left with just Trisha and her thoughts/hallucinations to fill the void of dynamic characters popping in and out. Though this never got repetitive, to me at least, as Trisha was an interesting character with her history of her degrading family relationships and her hopes and dreams and optimism pushing her to get through the suffering. And there is a lot of suffering that Trisha goes through which is hard to read, especially if you're not good with children being hurt or reading about her going through consistent emotional distress.
There of course is a big baseball theme around the whole book, which for me, I thought I originally wouldn't care for. But it's more of a background element and never really took me out whenever terminology or baseball player names were brought up. Its interspersed in between her surviving the wilderness, family flashbacks, and overall acts as a sort of relief or a connection back to the real world which I didn't mind too much towards the end.
The horror itself is a little different as well as I'd say it's more psychological horror than traditional monster horror without giving too much away. And at the end, I couldn't really say if everything that Trisha actually experienced or saw within the Appalachian woods were truly real or not. Giving the book a more interoperative layer that works for a single character driven story about physical and mental survival.
I enjoyed this book more than I was expecting when I first discovered it was more about survival than pure horror. Which I thought would be kind of boring, but I ended up liking it. Especially towards the end when the horror elements started to become the main focus. I'd recommend it for any Stephen King fans who hadn't read this book yet or for anyone looking for more of a survival style fictional story with some baseball added to it!
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