By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Sponsored by the Friends of the Tewksbury Library, the Needham Free Public Library (NFPL) shared an online event with Maine Author Sharon Kitchens. During this time, Kitchens discussed her new book “Stephen King’s Maine: A History & Guide.”
As an avid lover of Stephen King books all her life, Kitchens started to take notes of King’s books while reading them during the pandemic. Focusing on the details that King mentions within some of his works, she was able to identify the locations that serve as the basis for King’s fictional towns of Castle Rock, Jerusalem’s Lot, Derry, and Haven.
Drawing on historical materials, conversations with locals, and people who know King, Kitchens was able to shed light on the daily life in those places that would become the settings for “Carrie,” “Salem’s Lot,” “The Dead Zone,” “Cujo,” “IT,” and “11/22/63.” As she conducted all of this research, she ultimately realized that she was ironically driving through and/or past some of these locations within her own life.
“I started to take notes,” Kitchens stated, “about him [King] mentioning birds or the boy scouts or some of the locations that he is mentioning. And I was definitely paying special attention to Bangor because I had just been up there. But then I started reading more with the Castle Rock books and I was thinking, ‘Okay wait a minute, I have been in some of these places and what he was describing in some of the scenes, I was recognizing.’ So I would get out on the road every once in a while and I would drive these areas. And what I came to find out is that when I had been driving, before the pandemic and then after the pandemic, I had been driving through King Country basically.”
With this realization, Kitchens began conducting more and more research to see how these locations that he described would have looked like back when he was experiencing them. In order to do this, she was constantly meeting people in these areas including a Reverend, waitresses, business owners and even King’s own barber.
She ended up making detailed maps of these areas using all of the information that she had collected. Also within her work, found in the back, she has itineraries for those who are visiting Maine and want to check out some of these famous spots.
Upon getting his hands on Kitchens’ book, Stephen King himself tweeted, “This book by Sharon Kitchens is really interesting. Not all of it is right, but most of it is.” While Kitchens has never met King yet, she is honored that he liked the book and would like to hopefully ask him one day what the incorrect information within her work was.
When wrapping up this event, Kitchens stated “I really just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. Being a first time writer, the best, most amazing and extraordinary thing about this whole thing are the such sweet people that I meet. Every single time, everywhere I go, it just blows me away. I love the King world and I love that he has brought so much joy to people and we can all enjoy that.”
For more information about Kitchens’ book “Stephen King’s Maine: A History & Guide,” please visit the NFPL.
