Books: Gwendy's Magic Feather by Richard Chizmar (2019)

"Something evil has swept into the small western Maine town of Castle Rock on the heels of the latest winter storm. Sheriff Norris Ridgewick and his team are desperately searching for two missing girls, but time is running out to bring them home alive. In Washington D.C., thirty-seven-year-old Gwendy Peterson couldn't be more different from the self-conscious teenaged girl who once spent a summer running up Castle Rock's Suicide Stairs. That same summer, she was entrusted or some might say cursed with the extraordinary button box by Richard Farris, the mysterious stranger in the black suit. The seductive and powerful box offered Gwendy small gifts in exchange for its care and feeding until Farris eventually returned, promising Gwendy she'd never see the box again. One day, though, the button box shows up without warning and without Richard Farris to explain why, or what she's supposed to do with it. The mysterious reappearance of the box, along with the troubling disappearances in Castle Rock, leads Gwendy home again...where she just might be able to help rescue the missing girls and stop a madman before he does something ghastly."

As Stephen King notes is his forward to this short novel, when he was contacted by friend, writer, publisher Richard Chizmar, if there was a chance of them collaborating on something, the tale of Gwendy Peterson was already on King’s computer, an idea that dried up after a promising start. But they worked together to finish the story, and Gwendy’s Button Box was released in 2017. Chizmar thought that Gwendy’s story could continue, but as King noted. “I was interested, but not entirely convinced.” It’s when Chizmar suggested moving the story forward, having Gwendy an adult and a Congresswoman from Maine, did King see the potential. “Gwendy’s position of power,” he writes, "in the political machinery echoed the button box. I told him that it sounded fine, and he should go ahead.”

Gwendy’s Magic Feather is just as good as the first book, spotlighting a lot what makes King’s books work, the comings and goings of small towns. The book again returns to Castle Rock, which like Derry, is a legendary town with dark secrets. Still, a lot of short novel plays out like a morality play about choices we make and the price that comes with those choices –especially when Gwendy is confronted by her desire to see her husband (a photo-journalist on assignment in war torn Timor) and her cancer stricken mother. But in the background, as always with Castle Rock, something is stalking young girls and Gwendy may hold the key –or button box- to solve it.

I think Chizmar prose works well here, keeping the pages turning with short chapters and well established characters. The clues are there to discover who the Tooth Fairy is, but that’s really on secondary to Gwendy’s dilemma the button box proposes. The magic feather, when it pops up late in the book, seems a bit random, but you then realize that box, the feather and the mysterious Richard Farris are all connected.