Pages 347 - 392, In the Frame: Aftermath, with Extra Foreboding

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What Happened? All around the town in the aftermath of the failed missile 'puncture.'  Barbie talks with Julia Shumway about running for selectman; she suggests Brenda Perkins, the dead Cheif's wife, instead.  Sammy wakes up from her beating, still bleedin badly, and manages to get her baby out of the house, onto the open road before she collapses.  Later the "good" pastor (and the only one still alive), Piper Libby, finds her and takes to the hospital ... and ultimately bullies her to get the names of the people -- the 'cops' -- who did this to her.  Thurston and Carolyn, the college prof and his 'student', are matched up with abandoned kids Aiden and Alice -- a refugee family with no place to refuge-ate. Barbie meet them while entering a deserted city hall, then slips down to the bomb shelter (that we've seen before) and gets the Geiger Counter.  Brenda runs the firefighting op at the missile impact point, and does a great job, impressing the 'good' merchant Rommie Burpee.  Thinks about runnin for Fire Chief in the inevitable upcoming elections.  More kids have visions, this time about pink stars falling from the sky, leaving trails behind them.  And somebody's stealing all the propane in town -- even from the hospital.

It occurs to me that this is far and away King's most political novel.  Where The Stand is about faith and friendship, Salem's Lot about courage and personal sacrifice, It about childhood and adulthood and moving from one to the other, etc. etc., this 'small town horror' is very much about politics: factions forming and flowoing, the madness and dark magic of crowds (and mobs), the leadership of the sane and the insane.  It's also the first time I recall the real, live 'outside world' penetrating a King novel.  I mean, a letter from the President?  And though unnamed, it's obvious the current President Obama (whom Big Jim dismmisses immediately, almost thoghtlessly, as a 'monkey' and a loser).  Yes, there are some interesting characters here -- the good guys like Barbie and Shumway are particularly well-drawn -- but he's spending a lot of time on things lke elections and leaders and the future implications of same.  Along with the normal blood, death, and horror, of course.  It's particularly apparent in the last couple of sections, where he went to some trouble to set it up so the whole town could see the failed missile impact, and the lengthy discussions of how that public display would help or hurt each 'side' (lost of side-taking this time).

In fact, the actual disappointment and fear from the failure is acknowledged but almost brushed past, in favor of more set-up and foreshadowing -- so much so that the 'personal' moments, like the creation of the unlikely refugee family, seems a little weak.  (In geneal, the Thruston/Carolyn/Kids constellation seems the sketchiest and least necessary story line in the whole book so far, which probably means they're terribly important and I'm just missing something.)  But watch those pink stars falling and the upcoming Halloween.  If  I'm doing my math right, 'today' is the 25th, so there's still six days of hell -- at minimum -- before the bloody denoument.

We'll see ...