Maggie Siff

There are three ways up to Castle View from the town of Castle Rock: Route 117, Pleasant Road, and the Suicide Stairs.

Every day in the summer of 1974 twelve-year-old Gwendy Peterson has taken the stairs, which are held by strong (if time-rusted) iron bolts and zig-zag up the cliffside. At the top of the stairs, Gwendy catches her breath and listens to the shouts of the kids on the playground. From a bit farther away comes the chink of an aluminum bat hitting a baseball as the Senior League kids practice for the Labor Day charity game. 

One day, a stranger calls to Gwendy: 'Hey, girl. Come on over here for a bit. We ought to palaver, you and me.' On a bench in the shade sits a man in black jeans, a black coat like for a suit, and a white shirt unbuttoned at the top. On his head is a small neat black hat. The time will come when Gwendy has nightmares about that hat...

There are three ways up to Castle View from the town of Castle Rock: Route 117, Pleasant Road, and the Suicide Stairs.

Every day in the summer of 1974 twelve-year-old Gwendy Peterson has taken the stairs, which are held by strong (if time-rusted) iron bolts and zig-zag up the cliffside. At the top of the stairs, Gwendy catches her breath and listens to the shouts of the kids on the playground. From a bit farther away comes the chink of an aluminum bat hitting a baseball as the Senior League kids practice for the Labor Day charity game. 

One day, a stranger calls to Gwendy: 'Hey, girl. Come on over here for a bit. We ought to palaver, you and me.' On a bench in the shade sits a man in black jeans, a black coat like for a suit, and a white shirt unbuttoned at the top. On his head is a small neat black hat. The time will come when Gwendy has nightmares about that hat...

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 a mysterious stranger in a black suit. The seductive and powerful box offered Gwendy small gifts in exchange for its care until the stranger eventually returned, promising Gwendy she'd never see the box again.

Gwendy has never told a soul about the button box - not even her husband. But one day the button box shows up without warning and without the man in the black suit to explain what she is supposed to do with it. The curious 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 dangerous man before he does something too terrible to contemplate...