Revival

This spellbinding supernatural thriller from MWA Grand Master King chronicles one man’s efforts to, as narrator Jamie Morton phrases it, “tap into the secrets of the universe.” Charles Jacobs, a Methodist minister in rural Harlow, Maine, loses his faith when his wife and child die in a hideous car accident, but not his obsessive interest in electricity. Over the next 50 years, Jamie—a devoted congregant of Jacobs’s when young, but a wary skeptic as he matures—crosses paths with his friend as the constantly experimenting Jacobs graduates from carnival huckster, to faith healer, and finally to mad scientist convinced that he can harness a “secret electricity” to get a glimpse of “some unknown existence beyond our lives.” King (Mr. Mercedes) is a master at invoking the supernatural through the powerful emotions of his characters, and his depiction of Jacobs as a man unhinged by grief but driven by insatiable scientific curiosity is as believable as it is frightening. The novel’s ending—one of King’s best—stuns like lightning. Agent: Chuck Verrill, Darhansoff & Verrill Literary Agents. (Nov.)