About this item
Read Part One of Stephen Kings wildly entertaining People New York Times bestselling novel and the inspiration for the hit CBS television dramaOn an entirely normal beautiful fall day in Chesters Mill Maine the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage a gardeners hand is severed as the dome comes down on it people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families and cars explode on impact No one can fathom what this barrier is where it came from and whenor ifit will go away Dale Barbara Iraq vet and now a short-order cook finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizenstown newspaper owner Julia Shumway a physicians assistant at the hospital a select-woman and three brave kids Against them stands Big Jim Rennie a politician who will stop at nothingeven murderto hold the reins of power and his son who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry But their main adversary is the Dome itself Because time isnt just short Its running out.
About the Author
Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged. Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums. He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines. Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the collection or appeared in other anthologies.In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
