Duma Key is the story of Edgar Freemantle, a man whose live has disintegrated around him. A freak accident on a construction site causes him to lose his arm, injur his leg, and causes difficulties with his memory and speech. As things go very badly for him, and his marriage comes to an end, he takes the advice of his psychiatrist, Dr. Cayman, and moves away from the places that haunt him.

What he finds is haunting of a much deeper and more intimate sort. Without the ability to continue his career, he takes up drawing, and then painting, for which he suddenly finds an almost magical affinity. He’s always known there was talent there…but he never pursued it, so the way his art evolves and changes his health, his mind, and eventually his world both astonishes and fascinates him.

“How to draw a picture: Start with a blank surface. It doesn’t have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can’t remember.”

It’s not just his memories he has to find. It’s not just his world, or his art. Duma Key has called, and he has answered.

What King did was to take a blank page, as he suggests an artist must do to create a drawing, and on that he removed enough of the white to bring Edgar Freemantle’s world to life. The characters are vivid, and deeply empathetic. You can’t not care about them. Edgar is a troubled man. He has his problems…those around him have theirs as well. He’s a good man, and he tries to take care of things - he tries to use his art to make things better. His missing arm tries to help.

I wont’ go into details, because Stephen King has already done that. The images - the paintings he describes from their early sketches to their frenzied completion came to life for me. I can see the girls and the ships, the sunsets and the red basket.

I have daughters, and he reminded me again that we are here to watch out for one another, and that any day - any moment - can be the last.

This is a wonderful book. It is a novel of supernatural horror, but it is so much more - sliding along so many levels of the mind that you can get lost in it and not come up until the pages run out.

As a final note, I listened to the audio version - and narrator John Slattery did a wonderful job. I will probably hear his voice as Edgar Freemantle for a long time to come, and I Hope he will be narrator for future King books. Once their voice was Frank Muller…I think Mr. Slattery may be the heir.

I could not recommend this book more highly.

-DNW