Although Scott Carey doesn't look any different, he's been steadily losing weight, even as he is engaged in an escalating battle with the lesbians next door whose dog regularly drops his business on Scott's lawn. The women are trying to launch a new restaurant, but the people of small-town Castle Rock want no part of a gay married couple, and the place is in trouble. In Stephen King's "surprisingly sweet and quietly melancholy" novel (Publishers Weekly), when Scott finally understands the prejudices they face—including his own—he tries to help, while the annual foot race and the mystery of Scott's mystical affliction might just bring out the best in people who have indulged the worst in themselves.