All of a sudden, the mother and brother walking through the path in the woods stop fighting. The brother looks back, and doesn't see his nine-year-old sister Trisha, who was supposed to be following behind. Where is she? Where could she have gone?

This is Opening Day of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, the new Stephen King novel about faith, and perserverance, and baseball. Little Trisha McFarland, purely by accident, gets lost in the Maine woods after seperating herself from her family. What begins as a family outing one early Saturday morning becomes a long, dark journey for this little girl, one whose outcome is always uncertain. For Trisha may not be alone in the woods … and whatever is out there may be hungry.

The bulk of this short novel deals primarily with Trisha's lonesome journey deeper and deeper into the heart of the woods. One is often reminded of a similar journey by Jack Sawyer in the earlier book The Talisman, but Jack had the backdrop of America to rely on. Here, Trisha has only her wits, her rudimentary knowledge of the woods, and her Walkman, which broadcasts Red Sox baseball games, featuring her favorite player, Tom Gordon. The games become sort of a lifeline for her, a way to connect with the world of lights and people as she moves further and further away from that world. To keep her company, she imagines Gordon is with her at times, talking to her and generally keeping her sane. As the actual broadcasts begin to fade out, she relies more and more on her make-believe Tom Gordon, who speaks to her philosophically, and has faith in a saving God.

Trisha herself begins to lose faith in Tom Gordon's God. She has to contend with mosquitoes, wasps, water that makes her sick, a dwindling food supply, encroaching lonliness and a series of darker and darker hallucinations. In the midst of all these trials, she senses something, a God of the Lost, stalking her as prey, following her on her dark journey. This God becomes more real when she finds angry slash-marks on the trees in her path … and severed heads of animals seemingly left specifically for her to see.

Whether or not The God of the Lost is real becomes the true focus of the novel, and the issue of faith has never been more subtly presented. At every turn, Trisha is knocked down, but she gets up again (it's no mistake that Chumbawumba is the tape left in her Walkman), and it becomes fascinating to watch this little girl survive. At times, her adventure becomes disheartening (a trip through a boggy swamp is especially upsetting) but as Trisha puts more faith in Tom Gordon, we put more faith in her. Every time Gordon makes a save for the Red Sox, he gestures briefly toward the sky, an acknowledgement of his trust in God. We sweat out the pages of this book that bares his name to see if Trisha will make her own save.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is one of the most tense and scary books Stephen King has ever written. The writing is crisp and clear, and he doesn't seem to have time to go into much exposition. He tells us what we need to know, and moves on. This is no long, overly detailed narrative; here, the pages whiz by in a flash, perpetuated by the need to know if Trisha will ever get out of the woods, and what the God of the Lost truly is. If ever King wrote a book with "the gotta" in mind, this is it.

Intense, dark, and short enough to be read in one sitting, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is ultimately one of King's most satisfying novels. God may not love the Red Sox, but to Stephen King fans, He's been pretty fair. Play ball!

I am not a baseball fan.

I thought this was the reason I didn't much care for "Head Down," King's lenghty nonfiction peice closing out Nightmares & Dreamscapes. But this book, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon disippated my fears. King finally HAS written that baseball novel, and boy howdy is it good.

I got this one in advance of the general public (for review purposes --- no, REALLY!) and I essentially sat down one day and read the bulk of it in one sitting. I just couldn't put it down -- it's such a fast, great read.

Now here I'll forward my sneaking suspisicion, which I am loath to utter because I've been a King fan for a long time:

I think Stephen King is actually getting BETTER.

Bag of Bones really raised the bar, and Tom Gordon just makes it go even further. I haven't been this fully in King's grip in years. I must now wait, salivating like the fanboy I am, for Hearts in Atlantis.