The legendary storyteller dives into the deepest well of his imagination in this gripping novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good clashes with evil.

Charlie is an ordinary high school student, excellent at baseball and football, with decent grades. However, he carries a heavy burden. At seven, Charlie lost his mother, and the grief drove his father to alcohol. Charlie learned how to take care of himself and his dad. At seventeen, Charlie meets a dog, Radar, and her elderly owner, Howard Bowditch, who lives isolated in a large house with a locked shed in the yard. From time to time, strange noises are heard from the shed.

Charlie takes on various errands for Mr. Bowditch and becomes enamored with Radar. When Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a tape where he narrates an incredible story. He had kept secret that inside the shed there is a portal leading to another world.

At the beginning of the pandemic, King asked himself a question: "What could I write that would bring me joy? As if my imagination had been waiting for this question, a vast deserted city appeared in my mind, deserted but alive. I saw the empty streets, the haunted buildings, the monstrous head of a gargoyle overturned in the street. I saw broken statues… I saw a huge, sprawling palace with glass turrets so tall they pierced the clouds. Those images unleashed the story I wanted to tell."