Gwendy discovers its positives and negatives, watching history unfold and worrying about the wooden accessory’s effect on the greater world at large and her own microcosm of friends and family. The story revolves around a childhood spent protecting this box.

The eight buttons, however, are a bit harder to push because of the weight of their destructive significance - the black one is called “the Cancer Button” for a very good reason. Pushing one lever delivers delicious chocolate animals the other offers valuable silver coins. Richard Farris comes bearing a mahogany box with various colored buttons and levers, handing it to her with an ominous caveat: “It gives gifts, but they’re small recompense for the responsibility.” Gwendy is doing her daily workout at the local park on the grimly nicknamed Suicide Stairs when she meets an odd man with a black hat. Stephen King takes a trip back to Castle Rock in his new novella Gwendy’s Button Box (Cemetery Dance Publications, 180 pp., *** out of four stars), a different sort of coming-of-age story about a mysterious stranger and his odd little gift.Ĭo-written with Richard Chizmar, King’s zippy work returns to the small-town Maine locale of The Dead Zone, Cujo and other early novels to introduce Gwendy Peterson, a 12-year-old girl in 1974 wishing to get in shape and rid herself of the moniker “Goodyear.”

Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King