'Salem's Lot is a 1975
horror fiction novel written by the
American author
Stephen King. It was his second published novel. The story involves a writer named Ben Mears who returns to the town where he lived as a boy between the ages of 9 through 13 (Jerusalem's Lot, or 'Salem's Lot for short) in
Maine,
New England, to discover that the residents are all becoming
vampires. The town would be a location that would be revisited in the short stories "Jerusalem's Lot" and "One for the Road", both from King's 1978 short story collection
Night Shift. The novel was nominated for the
World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1976.
[1] In 1987, it was nominated for the
Locus Award as the All-Time Best Fantasy Novel.
[2]
The title King originally chose for his book was
Second Coming, but he later decided on
Jerusalem's Lot. King stated the reason being that his wife, novelist
Tabitha King, thought the original title sounded too much like a "bad sex story". King's publishers then shortened it to the current title, thinking the author's choice sounded too religious. '
Salem's Lot has been adapted into a television mini-series twice, first in
1979 and then in
2004. It was also adapted by the
BBC as a seven part radio play in
1995.
In two separate interviews, King said that Salem’s Lot was his favorite of his books. In his 1983
Playboy Interview the interviewer mentioned that because it was his favorite, King was planning a sequel,
[3] but he has more recently said on his website that since his
Dark Tower series picked up the story already, in the novels “Wolves of The Calla” and "Song of Susannah," he felt there was no longer a need for one.
[4] In 1987 he told Phil Konstantin in "The Highway Patrolman" magazine: "In a way it is my favorite story, mostly because of what it says about small towns. They are kind of a dying organism right now. The story seems sort of down home to me. I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!"
[5]
The book is dedicated to King's daughter Naomi: "For
Naomi Rachel King . . . promises to keep."
Plot summary
Ben Mears, a successful writer who grew up in the town of
Jerusalem's Lot,
Maine, has returned home after twenty-five years. He quickly becomes friends with high school teacher Matt Burke and strikes up a romantic relationship with Susan Norton, a young college graduate.
Ben starts writing a book about the Marsten House, an abandoned mansion where he had a bad experience as a child. Mears learns that the Marsten House—the former home of
Depression-era
hitman Hubert "Hubie" Marsten—has been purchased by
Kurt Barlow, an
Austrian immigrant who has arrived in the Lot ostensibly to open an antique store. Barlow is an apparent recluse; only his business partner, Richard Straker, is seen in public.
The duo's arrival coincides with the disappearance of a young boy, Ralphie Glick, and the death of his brother Danny, who becomes the town's first vampire, infecting such locals as Mike Ryerson, Randy McDougall, Jack Griffen, and Danny's own mother, Marjorie Glick. Danny fails, however, to infect Mark Petrie, who resists him successfully. Over the course of several weeks almost all of the townspeople are infected.
Ben Mears and Susan are joined by Matt Burke and his doctor, Jimmy Cody, along with young Mark Petrie and the local priest,
Father Callahan, in an effort to fight the spread of the vampires, whose numbers increase as the new vampires infect their own families and others. Susan is captured by Barlow before Mark has a chance to rescue her. Susan becomes a vampire, and is eventually staked through the heart by Mears, the man who loved her.
Father Callahan is caught by Barlow at the Petrie house after Barlow kills Mark's parents, but does not infect them, so they are later given a clean burial. Barlow holds Mark hostage, but Father Callahan has the upper hand, securing Mark's release, agreeing to Barlow's demand that he toss aside his cross and face him on equal terms. However he delays throwing the cross aside and the once powerful religious symbol loses its strength until Barlow can not only approach Callahan but break the cross, now nothing more than two small pieces of plaster, into bits. Barlow says "Sad to see a man's faith fail him", then forces the helpless Callahan to drink blood from Barlow's neck. Callahan resists but cannot hold out forever and is forced to drink, leaving him trapped in a netherworld, as Barlow has left his mark. When Callahan tries to re-enter his church he receives an electric shock, preventing him from going inside. Callahan disappears forever from "the Lot".
Jimmy Cody is killed when he falls from a rigged staircase and is impaled by knives by the one-time denizens of Eva Miller's boarding house, Mears' one-time residence, who have now all become vampires. Matt Burke dies from a heart attack in the town hospital. Ben Mears and Mark Petrie succeed in destroying the master vampire Barlow, but are lucky to escape with their lives and are forced to leave the town to the now leaderless vampires.
The novel's prologue, which is set shortly after the end of the story proper, describes the men's flight across the country to a seaside town in Mexico, where they stop to recover from their ordeal. Mark Petrie is received into the Catholic Church by a friendly local priest.
The epilogue has the two returning to the town a year later, intending to renew the battle. Ben, knowing that there are too many hiding places for the town's vampires, sets the town on fire with the intent of destroying it and the Marsten House once and for all.
Background
While teaching a high school Fantasy and Science Fiction course at
Hampden Academy, King was inspired by
Dracula, one of the books covered in the class. "One night over supper I wondered aloud what would happen if Dracula came back in the twentieth century, to America. 'He'd probably be run over by a Yellow Cab on Park Avenue and killed,' my wife said. (In the Introduction to the 2004 audiobook recording that Stephen King read himself, he says it was he who said "Probably he'd land in New York and be killed by a Taxi Cab, like
Margaret Mitchell in Atlanta", and it was his wife who suggested a rural setting for the book.
[6]) That closed the discussion, but in the following days, my mind kept returning to the idea. It occurred to me that my wife was probably right — if the legendary Count came to
New York, that is. But if he were to show up in a sleepy little country town, what then? I decided I wanted to find out, so I wrote
'Salem's Lot, which was originally titled
Second Coming".
[7]
King expands on this thought in his essay for
Adeline Magazine, "On Becoming a Brand Name" (February 1980): "I began to turn the idea over in my mind, and it began to coalesce into a possible novel. I thought it would make a good one, if I could create a fictional town with enough prosaic reality about it to offset the comic-book menace of a bunch of vampires."
Politics during the time influenced King's writing of the story. The corruption in the government was a significant factor in the inspiration of the story. "I wrote
'Salem's Lot during the period when the
Ervin committee was sitting. That was also the period when we first learned of the
Ellsberg break-in, the
White House tapes, the connection between
Gordon Liddy and the
CIA, the news of enemies' lists, and other fearful intelligence. During the spring, summer and fall of 1973, it seemed that the Federal Government had been involved in so much subterfuge and so many
covert operations that, like the bodies of the faceless wetbacks that
Juan Corona was convicted of slaughtering in California, the horror would never end ... Every novel is to some extent an inadvertent psychological portrait of the novelist, and I think that the unspeakable obscenity in
'Salem's Lot has to do with my own disillusionment and consequent fear for the future.
In a way, it is more closely related to Invasion of the Body Snatchers than it is to Dracula. The fear behind 'Salem's Lot seems to be that the Government has invaded everybody." [8]
King first wrote of Jerusalem's Lot in a
short story of the same title, penned in college (but published years later for the first time in the anthology collection
Night Shift).
In his non-fiction book,
Danse Macabre, King recalls a dream he had when he was eight years old. In the dream, he saw the body of a hanged man dangling from the arm of a scaffold on a hill. "The corpse bore a sign: ROBERT BURNS. But when the wind caused the corpse to turn in the air, I saw that it was my face - rotted and picked by birds, but obviously mine. And then the corpse opened its eyes and looked at me. I woke up screaming, sure that a dead face would be leaning over me in the dark. Sixteen years later, I was able to use the dream as one of the central images in my novel
'Salem's Lot. I just changed the name of the corpse to Hubie Marsten." King's paperback publisher bought the book for 550,000.
In a 1969 installment of "The Garbage Truck", a column King wrote for the
University of Maine at Orono's campus newspaper, King foreshadowed the coming of
'Salem's Lot by writing: "In the early 1800s a whole sect of
Shakers, a rather strange, religious persuasion at best, disappeared from their village (Jeremiah's Lot) in
Vermont. The town remains uninhabited to this day."
[9]
In addition to
Dracula,
Shirley Jackson's
The Haunting of Hill House (the opening passage of which King employed as an
epigraph for Part One of his novel) and
Grace Metalious'
Peyton Place are often cited as inspirations for
'Salem's Lot.
Illustrated edition
'Salem's Lot: Illustrated Edition
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