The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Trisha McFarland's parents are newly divorced, and in an effort to keep the family together, her mother and brother and herself take a walk in the woods, on a portion of the Appalachian Trail near their home (near the Maine/New Hampshire/Canada border). At one point, they come to a fork in the road, and Trisha, needing to pee, goes down one path to take care of business. The mother and brother go down the other path. When she is through, she decides to cut through the woods rather than retrace her steps, after all who could get lost here?.

Although she is only 9, Trisha has a very adult grasp on her situation, and the story concentrates on all of the things that run through her mind while lost. All of the fears both rational and not, plague her mind as she follows a stream in the hope of finding a way out. At night she listens to Baseball games on her Sony Walkman in the hope of listening to a Red Sox game, as she is a big fan of Tom Gordon, a relief pitcher for the Red Sox. Tom Gordon then becomes a character in the little girls mind, and helps her overcome her irrational thoughts and fears. There may be something threatening in the woods, then again, there may not, and only time will tell if Trisha escapes.