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,一九四七年出生于美国缅因州波特兰市，后在缅因州州立大学学习英国文学，毕业后因工资菲薄而走上写作之路。自一九七三年出版第一部长篇小说《魔女嘉莉》后，迄今已著有四十多部长篇小说和二百多部短篇小说。其作品是近年来美国畅销书排行榜上的常客，还被翻译成三十多种语言。有超过百部影视作品取材自他的小说。他因此被誉为“现代惊悚小说大师”。

一九九九年，斯蒂芬·金遭遇严重车祸，侥幸大难不死。在康复后，他又立刻投入写作。二○○三年，他获得美国国家图书基金会颁发的“杰出贡献奖”。其后又先后获得世界奇幻文学奖“终身成就奖”和美国推理作家协会“爱伦坡奖”的“大师奖”。

在斯蒂芬·金的众多作品中，以历时三十余年才终于完成的奇幻巨著“黑暗塔全系列”（共七卷）最为壮观，也最受金迷推崇，书里的人物与情节，散见于斯蒂芬·金的其它小说中，堪称他最重要的作品。《杜马岛》是其二○○八年出版的新作，被评选为第二届黑色羽毛笔奖“年度暗黑小说”，并获得恐怖小说界最高荣誉——斯托克奖。目前斯蒂芬·金与妻子居住于缅因州。