King's novels explore ideas that are timeless, many of them connected to ideas explored by writers in the ancient world and during the Renaissance as well as in works of classic American literature. By choosing as his protagonist a nine-year-old girl, King reduces humanity to its lowest common denominator and reveals her at the end as triumphant. Emulating the gesture of her hero, Red Sox pitcher Tom Gordon, she nonetheless acknowledges that she did not triumph without help.

1. Parables exist in a number of religious traditions, including the New Testament, Islamic mysticism, Jewish exegetical literature, and Zen Buddhism. An extremely short and plausible story, a parable draws an analogy between a particular example of behavior and human conduct at large and thus illustrates an ethical standard, a religious doctrine, or a standard of conduct. Does The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon correspond to this definition of...