Book Review: Bag of Bones (fiction)

Warning: Plot Spoiler

"Bag of Bones," like much of Stephen King's work, pulls you in quick with rich characters, and plots that tantalizingly unfold, keeping pages turning in a blur. True to the author's literary roots, Bag of Bones is a ghost story set in rural Maine -- the TR to be exact -- a place where you don't belong if not from those parts.

The protagonist is Mike Noonan, a man who writes for a living, and has lost the love of his life, his wife Jo, to a freak car accident. As Mike fights the writer's block that has settled in since her demise, he recycles old manuscripts he keeps in a deposit box; touting them as new material to his ever-hungry agent and publisher. However, the box is now empty, and Noonan must face the realization that his creative well is empty, having dried and died with his wife. Strange dreams, and the hope that a change of scenery will spark ideas, Mike heads to the TR, and his old summer back-woods home: Sara Laughs. Sara Laughs is perched over Dark Score Lake and the Street -- a rambling path that circumvents the shore; a place where townies stroll, where 'good pups and vile ones' alike can take the air.

Arriving in town to the stares of nosy locals and acquaintances, Mike Noonan nearly runs over Kyra Devore -- a precocious little girl who is the daughter of Mattie Devore, grand-daughter of Max Devore. Max Devore is a computer mogul who is determined to gain custody of Kyra from his daughter-in-law Mattie, the widow of his son. Mike comes to Kyra and Mattie's cause, urged on by whispers and rearranged fridge magnets in Sara Laughs; using his wealth and attraction to the young mother to fight a legal battle on their behalf. With this mission, Mike Noonan breaks through his writers block ,and begins a new story in the sweltering heat of his second floor office; on an old IBM typewriter that belonged to his dear wife.

Soon the natural and supernatural intertwine and we move in time, exposing violence that plants the seeds of ghostly revenge on the descendants of its perpetrators. The novel climaxes with a violent storm -- a storm of the century one might say -- where a drive-by claims the young mother, and leaves Kyra in Mike's charge; where he must prevent the last death in a long line of murdered children, and break the ghostly hold over the dynasties and thick woods of the TR.

Bibliography: King, Stephen (1999). Bag of Bones. New York, NY: Scribner.