No more than a dark pencil line on a blank page. A horizon line, maybe. But also a slot for blackness to pour through...A terrible construction site accident takes Edgar Freemantle's right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. A marriage that produced two lovely daughters suddenly ends, and Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived the injuries that could have killed him. He wants out. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, suggests a "geographic cure," a new life distant from the Twin Cities and the building business Edgar grew from scratch. And Kamen suggests something else. ""Edgar, does anything make you happy?" "I used to sketch.""Take it up again. You need hedges...hedges against the night.""Edgar leaves Minnesota for a rented house on Duma Key, a stunningly beautiful, eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico and the tidal rattling of shells on the beach call out to him, and Edgar draws. A visit from Ilse, the daughter he dotes on, starts his movement out of solitude. He meets a kindred spirit in Wireman, a man reluctant to reveal his own wounds, and then Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman whose roots are tangled deep in Duma Key. Now Edgar paints, sometimes feverishly, his exploding talent both a wonder and a weapon. Many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth's past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating. The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory and the nature of the supernatural -- Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.

斯蒂芬·金 Stephen King,一九四七年齣生於美國緬因州波特蘭市，後在緬因州州立大學學習英國文學，畢業後因工資菲薄而走上寫作之路。自一九七三年齣版第一部長篇小說《魔女嘉莉》後，迄今已著有四十多部長篇小說和二百多部短篇小說。其作品是近年來美國暢銷書排行榜上的常客，還被翻譯成三十多種語言。有超過百部影視作品取材自他的小說。他因此被譽為“現代驚悚小說大師”。

一九九九年，斯蒂芬·金遭遇嚴重車禍，僥幸大難不死。在康復後，他又立刻投入寫作。二○○三年，他獲得美國國傢圖書基金會頒發的“傑齣貢獻奬”。其後又先後獲得世界奇幻文學奬“終身成就奬”和美國推理作傢協會“愛倫坡奬”的“大師奬”。

在斯蒂芬·金的眾多作品中，以曆時三十餘年纔終於完成的奇幻巨著“黑暗塔全係列”（共七捲）最為壯觀，也最受金迷推崇，書裏的人物與情節，散見於斯蒂芬·金的其它小說中，堪稱他最重要的作品。《杜馬島》是其二○○八年齣版的新作，被評選為第二屆黑色羽毛筆奬“年度暗黑小說”，並獲得恐怖小說界最高榮譽——斯托剋奬。目前斯蒂芬·金與妻子居住於緬因州。