The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon begins with a note of fear and despair: "The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. Trisha McFarland discovered this when she was nine years old" and lost in the Maine woods. It ends with a triumphant Trisha reunited with her family, having overcome her fears and the powerful external adversaries she encounters during her nine-day journey.

At first glance, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Stephen King's tale of a young girl's struggles to find herself while lost in the wilderness, would appear to have no important social context. This absence makes the novel uncharacteristic of King, for his novels have achieved wide-ranging popularity precisely because they touch upon concerns central to American life at the end of the twentieth century. For example, King had protested the Vietnam War as a college student...