The Talisman (1983)
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
The Talisman is also the title of a 1983 fantasy novel by Stephen King and Peter Straub. The plot of the King/Straub novel is not a reworking of the earlier Walter Scott book also titled The Talisman, although there is one oblique reference to "a Sir Scott Walter Scott novel".
This book charts the adventure of a twelve year old boy named Jack Sawyer. The young hero sets out from the East Coast of the USA in a bid to save his mother, who is dying from cancer, by finding an artifact called 'The Talisman'.
Werewolves, known simply as Wolfs, inhabit the far western parts of a world parallel to America called the Territories and serve as royal herdsman or bodyguards. A sixteen-year-old Wolf, simply named Wolf, accidentally is pulled into America by Jack Sawyer, adopts him as his herd, and dies saving him from the nightmarish Sunlight Home. Wolf is a slow, though extremely likeable werewolf that more or less defys most conventional myths about werewolves.
By splitting the story between 'The Territories' (a strange, fantasy world with ties to King's Dark Tower series) and the familiar US, King and Straub are able to constantly able to throw Jack from the frying pan to the fire, as he escapes from one life-threatening situation to another. Accompanied by a werewolf named Wolf and his friend Richard, Jack must retrieve the Talisman before it falls in the hands of his deceased father's evil accomplice Morgan Sloat.
