Peter Straub

After a series of gruesome murders in Wisconsin, retired Los Angeles homicide detective Jack Sawyer finds himself drawn back to the parallel universe of the Territories and to his own hidden past.

Twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer embarks on an epic quest--a walk from the seacoast of New Hampshire to the California coast--to find the talisman that will save his dying mother's life. Jack's journey takes him into the Territories, a parallel medieval universe, where most people from his own universe have analogs called "twinners." The queen of the Territories, Jack's mother's twinner, is also dying.