Johnny Smith is as ordinary as his name suggests.  He is a young enthusiastic teacher, he is in love with Sarah Hazlett, and he's about to take that relationship onto a next level.  One evening at a carnival he seems to have a remarkable luck at the wheel of fortune.  Sarah feels very uneasy about it, and a bad hot-dog sure doesn't make things any better.  Johnny takes her to her home, and then takes a taxi to where he lives.  The taxi will never arrive, and the next time Johnny is awake it will be four and a half years later.

When Johnny wakes up the world has moved on.  Nixon is no longer a president, Sarah is no longer an unmarried woman, and even the pens are no longer the pens Johnny used to know.  He recovers very slowly, and has to endure a painful therapy involving several operations to allow him to use his body again after not having moved for almost five years.  A part of his brain doesn't seem to get activated again, but in return another part is doing remarkable things.  He warns a nurse about her house that is about to burn down, he knows where a surgeon's presumed dead but very alive mother is, and he knows these things only by touching those people.

The press finds out about Johnny's special ability, but Johnny refuses to spend the rest of his life as a freak and he seeks the solitude of his father's home.  But there a small-town sheriff finds him and convinces him to help catch a killer.  He does, and again his former quiet life is filled with an obtrusive press and desperate cries from all over the country to help find news about lost loved ones. 

Then he meets a rising star in the local political scene, and he is worried by what he "sees" about this man.  Very worried.  The inner conflict that had been simmering ever since he found out what he can sometimes see flares up even stronger.  What would you do about Hitler, knowing what you know today, if you had the possibility to go back and meet him?

I guess there are many stories about all sorts of specially gifted people, I guess there are all sorts of stories about people that wake up from a long coma with new powers or knowledge they couldn't possibly have had.  What is so interesting about King's story is that those abilities are not really important here.  Sure, without them there wouldn't be a story, but I mean that this is not a story about a psychic, this is a story about a torn young man.  Torn between his love for Sarah and the anger for the lost years, between his hope for her having a good life and his jealousy for it.  Torn between the love for his mother and the incredible guilt for being the cause of her religious lunacy, even if it was the accident that was the real cause, and maybe it wouldn't have made any difference anyway.  But above all: torn between his belief that nobody has the right to take a life and the knowledge that if he doesn't something unimaginably much worse will happen.

Horror fans may forget about it: the horror in this book does not come from monsters or vampyres, it comes from these inner conflicts, it comes from questions that have no correct answer.  And maybe that is the most powerful thing in this book.  I found it very easy to identify with the characters, I found them very much alive and real.  Yes, even the dark-souled Stillson, even his nasty helpers.  And at the same time this book about horrible choices has this layer of love all over it, Johnny's love for Sarah, for his parents, for doctor Weizak.  It just makes it even more real, and it makes the questions it asks even more difficult to answer.