| The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon |
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| 1999 novels | |
| novels by stephen king | |
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In 2004 , a Pop-up Book adaptation was released by Simon And Schuster , designed by Kees Moerbeek and ilustrated by Alan Dingman. The story is set in motion by a family hiking trip, during which Trisha's brother and mother constantly squabble about the mother's divorce, as well as other topics. Trisha falls back to avoid listening and is therefore unable to find her family again after she wanders off the trail to take a bathroom break. She starts walking in the direction she thinks they went, but takes a wrong turn and ends up hopelessly lost, heading deeper into the heart of the forest. She is left with a bottle of water, four Twinkies , a Boiled Egg , a sandwich, a large bottle of Surge , a Poncho , and her Walkman to survive. Now and then she listens to her Walkman to keep her mood up, either to learn of news of the search for her, or to listen to baseball games featuring her favorite player, and "hearthrob," Tom Gordon . While she starts to take steps to survive by conserving what little food she had with her, picking berries and so on, her mother and brother return to their car without her and call the police and start a search. Naturally, they search in the area around the path, but not as far away as she has gone. The girl decides to follow a creek, rationalizing that all bodies of water lead to a source and eventually civilization. As the cops stop searching for the night, she huddles up underneath a tree to rest. Eventually, a combination of fear, hunger, and thirst causes Trisha to hallucinate. She imagines several people from her life, as well as her hero, Tom Gordon, appearing to her. Author Stephen King purposely makes it unclear whether increasingly obvious signs of a monster in the woods are also hallucinations. (Noting she is in the same area of woods as Louis Creed in Pet Sematary , some even suggest that what Trisha observes are signs of the Wendigo , the bloodthirsty monster that haunts the woods of upper Maine, and the same thing the good doctor saw when he went to bury his son in the Micmac Burial ground.) Hours and soon days begin to pass, with Trisha wandering further into the woods. Eventually she begins to believe that she is headed for a confrontation with the God of the Lost, a wasp-faced, evil entity who is hunting her down. Her trial becomes a test of a very young girl's ability to maintain sanity in the face of seemingly certain death. Eventually she comes upon a road, but just as she discovers signs of civilization, she is confronted by a bear — which she (possibly correctly) interprets as the God of the Lost in disguise. She attempts to fend the bear off by pitching her Walkman at it, but is rescued by a hunter. THEOLOGY "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" explores theology in three forms: the God of the Lost, The Subaudible, and Tom Gordon's God. The God of the Lost follows Trisha in the form of a large, malevolent bear with wasps for eyes. It also appears along with the Subaudible, and Tom Gordon's God as a black-robed being with a head formed of wasps and long yellow claws. The Subaudible is mentioned in the beginning and appears to Trisha in the form of her father. The Subaudible is described as a force that influences events towards people's favor, for example a nuclear bomb has not been used since the second World War. Tom Gordon's God is a reference to Tom Gordon's habit of pointing to the sky before his pitch. According to the image of Gordon that appears to Trisha, God does not appear until the ninth inning. Trisha experiences could also be related to a Vision Quest . ISBN NUMBERS
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