Book Review – The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon was written by Stephen King and I think that this is one of his best books ever and I am a huge Stephen King fan. Once again he forgoes the “horror” genre and just writes a compelling and stirring story like he did in “The Shawshank Redemption” without any gore or supernatural beasties.

Tricia McFarland is a nine year old girl going through a family crisis when her parents divorce. Her older brother and mother are constantly squabbling and she has taken over the role of peacemaker while living in her own world which revolves around baseball and one player in particular, Tom Gordon. She literally, eats, sleeps and breaths baseball and is very knowledgeable.

Her mother enjoys hiking, so she decides to take the kids up into the Maine-New Hampshire woods. The weather is supposed to be good and it isn’t a long hike. Mother and son bicker and Tricia wanders off the path, figuring she will catch up with them since she is tired of hearing the same old “blah-blah-blah” between them and she needs to relieve herself anyway. Tricia figures she will take a shortcut and catch up with them farther along the path.

She doesn’t realize it but she has gone the wrong way and is going farther away from her family and safety. The only supplies she has is a backpack, a Walkman, a sack lunch and a bottle of water.

This is her story of surviving day by day in the woods, alone except for listening to the Red Sox baseball games on her Walkman and dreaming of rescue. King writes this character brilliantly and holds you spell bound never knowing what she is going to do to save herself because the search party is in the wrong area so she is on her own.

I rate this book a winner all the way and highly recommend it.

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