In the fall of 2001, Wilcox's eighteen-year-old boy Ned starts coming by the barracks, mowing the lawn, washing windows, shoveling snow. Sergeant Commanding Sandy Dearborn knows it's the boy's way of holding on to his father, killed in the line of duty in a gruesome auto accident. Missing his father, Ned is allowed to become part of the Troop D family, and one day he looks through a window of Shed B and discovers the family secret. Just like his father, he wants answers. And the secret begins to stir.

From a Buick 8 is a novel about the fascination deadly things have for us and about our insistence on answers when there are none. Like The Green Mile, it is set in a close knit and isolated community and exploits King's unparalleled ability to describe the often sinister interaction of men in small groups. King completed a draft of From a Buick 8 before his own near-fatal auto accident just two years ago, and he addresses the coincidencesbetween his life and the novel in a fascinating afterword.