Gwendy's Magic Feather

The second installment in the series that began with Gwendy's Button Box (co-written by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar), this novel picks up the story of Gwendy Peterson 15 years after a mysterious stranger named Richard Farris first entrusted her, at age 12, with a powerful mahogany box fitted with colored buttons and levers. The box dispenses tiny animal-shaped chocolates that enhance the user's abilities, as well as silver coins, but each of its eight buttons corresponds to a continent and can cause destruction there. A red button grants "whatever you want," and a black button can destroy everything.

On December 16, 1999, Gwendy is a 37-year-old first-term congresswoman representing Maine's First District. A former bestselling novelist and Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, she entered politics after the AIDS-related death of her best friend and mentor, Johnathon Riordan. Her outrage over the discriminatory treatment of people living with AIDS drove her to run for Congress, and in 1998 she upset an incumbent Republican by fewer than 4,000 votes. Now nearly a year into her term, she is frustrated by stalled pharmaceutical legislation and adjusting to life in Washington.

That morning, Gwendy reads a newspaper article about two missing Castle County girls: Carla Hoffman, 15, abducted from her bedroom, and Rhonda Tomlinson, 14, who vanished walking home from school in nearby Bridgton. Back in her office, a more personal shock awaits. She discovers an 1891 Morgan silver dollar beside her keyboard and hears Farris's voice. She finds the button box inside a filing cabinet drawer, triggering a cascade of memories: Farris giving her the box on a park bench in Castle Rock, the magical chocolates, the horror of pressing a button and then watching news coverage of the Jonestown Massacre, and the violent night her boyfriend was murdered by a bully who attacked them to steal the box.

Gwendy smuggles the box home, consumed by two questions: Why has it returned, and why now? She has never told anyone about it. Her husband, Ryan Brown, a professional photographer covering government unrest on the island of Timor for Time magazine, calls that evening on a poor connection that cuts out repeatedly. On her last day before Congress's holiday recess, a security guard gives her a Christmas gift: a copy of Gravity's Rainbow, the same novel Farris was reading 25 years earlier when he first gave her the box. Shaken by the coincidence, she spends the evening watching news about President Hamlin's inflammatory rhetoric escalating a nuclear standoff with North Korea.

Gwendy flies to Castle Rock, guarding the box in her carry-on and wrestling with a question that has haunted her since adolescence: How much of her success is her own doing, and how much belongs to the box? She hides it in a fireproof safe at her condo and settles into holiday routines. Her mother, who recently completed chemotherapy, is recovering well. Over breakfast at the local diner, Sheriff Norris Ridgewick, Castle Rock's longtime lawman, confides that the investigation into the missing girls has yielded almost nothing. While Christmas shopping, Gwendy is alarmed to spot her mother chatting with a tall, thin stranger in a black hat who matches Farris's description.

As the days pass, the box's pull intensifies. One night, Gwendy pulls both levers, producing a silver dollar and a tiny chocolate horse, but she flushes the chocolate down the toilet. After Carol Hoffman, Carla's mother, verbally attacks Gwendy and Ridgewick at the sheriff's office, and with Ryan still unreachable, Gwendy gives in and eats a chocolate. She experiences a rush of calm and clarity but catches herself fantasizing about using the red button to eliminate President Hamlin before a warning voice snaps her back.

The day before Christmas Eve, Ridgewick calls Gwendy to a field where officers found Carla's pink sweatshirt with three teeth in its pocket. During a community search, a battered black hat matching Farris's blows out of the trees toward her before another searcher, a young man named Lucas Browne, stomps on it. That evening, a figure in dark clothing pursues Gwendy in her condo parking lot. At a Christmas Eve party, a drunk Carol Hoffman grabs Gwendy and threatens her. Gwendy escapes to another room, and moments later Mrs. Hoffman inexplicably falls and hits her head, though no one was near her. Fearing the box's power caused the fall, Gwendy leaves it locked in the safe overnight for the first time.

Christmas morning brings a meaningful gift: a small white feather her father found in the garage, the same "magic feather" Gwendy bought during a childhood vacation. Her father's card reads that she has always believed in magic and magic has always believed in her. That night, alone and missing Ryan, Gwendy falls into a dark spiral as the box's seductive inner voice urges her to press the red button. She is on the verge of giving in when her phone rings: Bea Whiteley, her receptionist, calls to say she sensed Gwendy was in trouble, breaking the box's hold.

The day after Christmas, Mrs. Peterson is rushed to the hospital after vomiting blood. Agonizing over her mother's condition, Gwendy smuggles a chocolate from the box to the hospital. The next morning, all scans come back clean, the earlier results attributed to a laboratory error. Over the following days, Gwendy gives her mother seven chocolates total and watches her recover fully. Meanwhile, a third girl, 14-year-old Deborah Parker, goes missing near Gwendy's condo.

On New Year's Eve, at a town celebration, Gwendy discovers that physical contact can trigger visions. When she hugs Brigette Desjardin's husband, Travis, at midnight, she suddenly knows intimate details of his life. Minutes later, she slips on ice, and Lucas Browne catches her. Their bare fingers touch, and a horrifying vision floods her mind: Lucas in a dental school lab coat, then standing over Deborah Parker with rusty pliers, cowboy boots splattered with blood. Gwendy realizes Lucas is the abductor the press has dubbed "The Tooth Fairy."

Gwendy calls Ridgewick immediately. The investigation confirms Lucas was expelled from the University of Buffalo's dental school after stalking complaints and that his father had been hired to work at the homes of both the Tomlinson and Parker families. Officers raid the Browne residence and a family cabin near Dark Score Lake, finding Deborah Parker alive in the cabin's cellar. The remains of Rhonda and Carla are recovered from shallow graves. Lucas is arrested.

On New Year's Day, Ryan arrives unannounced, and the couple reunites joyfully. An emergency congressional session is called because of the North Korea crisis. At the Portland South Airpark, Richard Farris appears beside Gwendy on a bench. He explains he needed to hide the box somewhere safe and chose her because she was the safest person he knew. When she confesses giving her mother the chocolates, Farris replies obliquely that hospitals make blood-test mistakes all the time. He then addresses the question that has haunted her: Her life is her own. The stories she has told, the people she has fought for, and the lives she has touched are all her own doing.

Gwendy discovers the box has vanished from her carry-on; Farris has already reclaimed it. Before disappearing, he leaves a small white feather on her bag, echoing her childhood talisman. Gwendy takes Ryan's hand and walks into the airport, resolved to listen, learn, and lead.