Stephen King was born September 21, 1947 in Portland, Maine, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. Two years later, his father, a merchant seaman, went to the grocery store for a pack of cigarettes and never returned. King's mother was left to raise her two sons in near-poverty conditions taking jobs as laundry presser and doughnut baker to make ends meet. The one thing that was not in short supply, however, was love.

"Home was always rented. Our outhouse was painted blue and that's where we contemplated the sins of life. Our well was always going dry. I'd have to lug water from a spring in another field, and even now I'm nervous about our wells."¹. There were no bathing facilities, so a hot bath meant a half a mile trek to Aunt Ethelyn's house, an especially difficult task during the icy Maine winter.

King fell...