What happens when an accident leaves you disfigured and your memory all jumbled up and when you try to start afresh, you end up being involved in something mysteriously dangerous? Hard to imagine? However, this is exactly what Stephen King has tried to present in his new novel, ‘Duma Key’. Still riding high on the success of ‘Lisey’s Story’, the author is all set to release his latest novel on 22^nd January 2008. Get ready to go through myriad emotions, when you come across obstinacy of love, dangers of creativity, ambiguity of memory and a world full of bizarre incidents - incapable of explanation!

 

Duma Key is mainly the story of a man - Edgar Freemantle, whose life turns topsy-turvy with one single accident. Edgar is one of the big shots in the field of building and construction. Everything in his life is going smooth, right from his family front to his business deals. One day, he meets with an accident at one of his jobs sites, which leads to the amputation of his right arm and a scrambled memory. Edgar’s family that, till now, comprised of his beautiful wife and two lovely daughters breaks down and his wife marries another fellow.

 

Dejected and disillusioned by life, he starts wishing that he hadn’t survived that unfortunate accident. However, life moves on and the same happens with Edgar Freemantle also. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, advises him to move out of Minnesota, his home town, and go somewhere totally different from where he lived. Edgar tells him about his hobby of sketching and Dr. Kamen suggests him to again take up his hobby and totally forget about his construction business. Following the advice, Edgar moves to on Duma Key, off the Florida coast.

 

The beauty of the place encourages him to draw. Ilse, his daughter, visits him there and Edgar breaks his self-imposed seclusion and starts socializing. This is when he meets Wireman, an affectionate man who always keeps his wounds to himself. Then, there is Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman whose ancestry is somewhere jumbled within Duma Key. Throughout this time, Edgar is paintings - the drawings acting as a marvel and a weapon. It is when Elizabeth's past begins to unfold that the story takes a dangerous turn. Who is Elizabeth? What are the secrets hidden in her past? To know the answers, wait for the novel.

 

Stephen King was born in Portland Maine in 1947. His first stint at writing was in his sophomore year, when he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, at the University of Maine. He sold his first professional short story in 1967. Luck favored Stephen in 1973, when Doubleday & Co. accepted his novel Carrie for publication. From then onwards, he never looked back. He entered the field of movies in 1985, when he did the direction and screenplay, for Maximum Overdrive. Stephen received National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003.