The Dead Zone

A car crash puts small-town Maine teacher Johnny Smith into a coma for nearly five years, and when he wakes, he finds he can catch flashes of a stranger's past or future with a single touch, though the visions have odd blind spots he calls 'dead zones.' As Johnny tries to rebuild an ordinary life around an extraordinary and unwanted gift, the novel introduces the ambitious, morally hollow politician Greg Stillson, climbing toward power in a career Johnny will eventually be forced to reckon with. Stephen King's novel about the cost of knowing too much, set in his recurring Maine.