The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

Stephan King is one of the most prolific writers of horror fiction, or any other kind, in the world. He is famous for possessed homicidal fathers, dogs, and cars mixed with stories of vampires and a plethora of monsters.

However, in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon he tells the story of a nine year old girl who gets lost in the woods, discovers amazing inner strength and a connection to her heroes.

Trisha is hiking with her divorced mother and brother who are bickering as usual. She goes into the woods to pee, but mostly to get away from them.

She does not find her way back but goes further and further into the woods with nothing but her Walkman, whose batteries she has to hoard, her knowledge that her hero, Tom Gordon pulls games out all the time. She follows his lead, she uses her worship of him to go beyond anything she had ever thought possible before. Although she maintains her love of him, she finds that the strength is within and with God.

There is a presence which appears to be one of King's trademark supernatural beings*, but is something real, something that was important to Trisha to learn how to survive and transcend.

*The promotion for this book does portray this being as supernatural, I think to entice King readers, but it is not.

"My idea was to write a kind of fairy-tale, 'Hansel and Gretel' without Hansel. My heroine (Trisha) would be a child of divorce living with her mother and maintaining a meaningful connection with her father mostly through their mutual love of baseball and the Boston Red Sox. Lost in the woods, she'd find herself imagining that her favorite Red Sox player was with her, keeping her company and guiding her through the terrible situation in which she found herself. Tom Gordon, #36, would be that player. Gordon is a real pitcher for the Red Sox; without his consent I wouldn't have wanted to publish the book. He did give it, for which I am deeply grateful.

"'The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon' isn't about Tom Gordon or baseball, and not really about love, either," King says. "It's about survival, and God, and it's about God's opposite as well. Because Trisha isn't alone in her wanderings. There is something else in the woods -- the God of the Lost is how she comes to think of it -- and in time she'll have to face it."

Stephan King is the ultimate Red Sox fan and baseball fan in general. In 1992 he built a full baseball stadium for the kids of Bangor, Maine.

The team is the Bangor Youth and Amateur Baseball and the League, interestingly is "The Ghost League".

King is very generous with his money in the town of Bangor and here he was able to combine two long time loves, his hometown and baseball.

Here we can see King's unmistakable mug underneath rain gear. He is a true fan!

Tom Gordon, relief pitcher, has been ranked 71 out of the 100 most valuable Red Sox.

Stephen King asked his permission to use his name in the book. His signature pointing to the sky was a key aspect of what helped Trish. It helped bring her to her spirit both up above and inside of her.

The complete story: Tom Gordon on Wikipedia

There isn't a movie, but I found a series of 5 on YouTube where some kids made a movie out of it. I didn't expect great, and I was prepared to be generous, but I just couldn't post them.

I liked the idea of these kids doing this, being creative, especially about this book, but I just didn't like what they did, however, if you want to see them they are on YouTube, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon