The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

While there are a limited number of characters in the story, King presents each very realistically. The main character in the story is Trisha McFarland, a nine year old girl who lives with her mother and brother Pete. Her parents are divorced and her mother and brother are always fighting. She doesn’t like hearing them fight; this is the main reason she ends up lost in the woods. Another main character is a Boston Red Sox baseball player named Tom Gordon. He is Trisha and her dad’s favorite baseball player.

She thinks, “...Number 36 is the handsomest man alive, and if he ever touched her hand she’d faint” (11).

Besides characterization, King uses suspense to keep the reader intrigued. As mentioned before, the chapters are arranged by innings and this is a very clever move on King’s part. Because of this chapter setup, King moves the story along at about the same speed of a baseball game. Just as in most baseball games, the suspense builds as the innings progress. The beginning of the book is not very suspenseful; just Trisha getting lost in the woods. But as the story progresses, Trisha’s fear and continued misfortune create even greater suspense. Not to mention the “special thing” watching and waiting for her. By the end of the book, she has been gone for nine days and the suspense is reaching a climax; “She heard the hum of mosquitoes around her ears…and another hum, as well. The hum of tires on

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