Revival (novel)

Revival

First edition cover
Author	Stephen King
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Horror
Published	November 11, 2014
Publisher	Scribner
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	405
ISBN

Revival is a novel by Stephen King, published on November 11, 2014 by Scribner. This was King's second novel published during 2014, and his fourth since 2013.

The novel was first mentioned by King on June 20, 2013, while doing a video chat with fans as part of promoting the upcoming Under the Dome TV series. During the chat King stated that he was halfway through writing his next novel, Revival. The novel was officially announced on February 12, 2014. An excerpt was included at the end of the paperback edition of King's Doctor Sleep, published on June 10, 2014 (). In an interview with Rolling Stone, King stated that Revival was inspired by Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan" and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and, like several of King's preceding novels, he has had the idea for this novel since childhood.

When Charles Jacobs, a new minister, comes to town, young Jamie Morton is excited. Almost everyone in the tiny Maine hamlet comes to love Jacobs, his beautiful wife, or both of them. Things change all too suddenly when Mrs. Jacobs and her baby die in a gruesome auto accident. Half-crazed, the reverend denounces God and religion during a sermon, is banished from the town, and thereafter pursues successive careers as a sideshow huckster and then a faith healer, fueled by his lifelong experiments with electricity. Jamie meanwhile, grows up to be a musician, and develops a drug problem, which ends after he is "saved' by Jacobs, who uses an unorthodox electrical treatment to heal Jamie and cure him of his addiction.

Afterwards, Jamie experiences strange side effects, including jabbing himself with sharp objects while in a fugue state, as if trying to inject heroin. This leads him to start looking into those that Jacobs has healed. As it turns out, many of them have experienced similar side effects and some have killed themselves and others as a result. Later, Jacobs contacts him; Jamie's childhood sweetheart, Astrid, has developed terminal cancer. Jacobs agrees to heal her, but only if Jamie will become his personal assistant for one last experiment. Jamie reluctantly agrees, and Astrid is cured.

Jamie helps Jacobs prepare for his final experiment: Jacobs has discovered something he terms "secret electricity", an all-powerful energy source that he has been using to effect his miraculous cures over the years. He now intends to harness a massive surge of this energy and channel it into a terminally ill woman named Mary Fay, who he has relocated to his lab. Jacobs' plan is to revive Mary Fay after her death, not in the conventional manner, but in the sense that she will be clinically dead and yet able to communicate with Jacobs and tell him of the afterlife and what fate befell his wife and child after their death.