When six-year-old Jamie Morton's brother loses his voice in an accident, the town's new minister, Reverend Jacobs, restores it with an electrical gadget of his own design. The Reverend is a man of the cloth who loves electricity, until his wife and young son are tragically killed and he loses his faith. He becomes a carnival performer, a healer and a wealthy eccentric, but his relationship with Jamie is far from over.
Years later, Jamie, a young musician hooked on heroin, seeks Jacobs's help to kick the addiction, again with an unusual gadget. Jacobs heals many people, but the bizarre after-effects of his electrical treatments are undeniable. At times, Jamie wakes up in strange surroundings only to find himself banging his head against the wall and stabbing his arm with a pen, repeating, "Something happened. Something happened."
Eventually, Jacobs calls a middle-aged Jamie to an isolated house in Maine because he needs help, and Jamie reluctantly agrees. The older man's plan seems impossible: he wants to reach beyond the grave with his "secret electricity."
It's this final Lovecraftian turn that provides most of the direct horror in the novel. Otherwise, King does what he does best: he creates compelling, fully developed characters who stand in for the reader--initially skeptical, incredulous, everyday folk, later true believers who have come into contact with forces beyond the ordinary. There's not much gore in Revival, but the creep factor is dialed up on every page with a sense of foreboding that eventually comes to a satisfying and truly shocking conclusion. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor