Published in 2014, Revival is a cosmic horror novel by the American horror writer Stephen King. King was inspired to write the book by his upbringing in a Methodist family. While paying homage to other classic writers of horror, like American weird fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft and the English novelist Mary Shelley, King also drew inspiration from the horror novella The Great God Pan, which was written by Welsh author Arthur Machen in 1894.

Spanning over 50 years, the novel orbits the relationship between protagonist Jamie Morton and the minister of his local Methodist church, Charles Jacobs. Jacobs has a formative impact on the young Morton, but when a horrifying accident causes Jacobs to lose his faith, Jamie must reckon with the shifting meaning of Jacobs’s influence in his life. As an adult, Jamie encounters Jacobs once again, the former minister having found a new vocation in electrical experiments. As they continue to cross paths well into Jamie’s late life, Jamie finds himself torn between helping Jacobs unlock the door to a secret world and stopping him once and for all. The novel explores themes of The Emotional Costs of Starting Anew, The Dynamics of Science and Faith, and The Dangers of Curiosity.

This study guide refers to the First Pocket Books paperback edition of the novel, published in 2017.

Content Warning: The source material for this study guide depicts or references self-harm, death by suicide, domestic violence and spousal abuse, drug use and addiction, and child death. The text also includes gory descriptions, as well as offensive language for provincial people.

Plot Summary

The novel begins in 1962 when six-year-old Jamie Morton meets Charles Jacobs, the new Methodist minister of Harlow, Maine. Jacobs inspires a love of science in Jamie, using electrical tools to teach the Morton children lessons on faith. Three years later, Jacobs performs a miracle when Jamie’s brother, Conrad, suddenly loses his voice in a skiing accident. Using one of his electrical inventions, Jacobs restores Conrad’s voice. The Mortons are grateful for their minister’s help. However, their joy is cut short when Jacobs’s wife, Patsy, and son, Morrie, are suddenly killed in a fatal car crash later that year. Jacobs’s grief pushes him to deliver a scathing sermon about the cruelty of life and the hypocrisy of religion. Because of what comes to be known as the “Terrible Sermon,” Jacobs is cast out of Harlow. Jamie, who soon loses his faith in God as well, is one of the few people to extend his sympathy to the minister as he departs from town.

Through his teens, Jamie turns his attention to music and his first crush, a girl named Astrid Soderberg. Jamie uses his musical skills to get Astrid’s attention. They enter a relationship and lose their virginity to each other at Skytop, a mountaintop pole that attracts lightning during thunderstorms. Jamie and Astrid part ways when they leave for their respective colleges. Jamie continues to develop his musical skills, which leads him to a career as a rhythm guitarist.

In 1992, the 36-year-old Jamie is kicked out of his latest band when he fails to show up for their set. Jamie has an addiction to heroin, which helps him to cope with the murder of his only sister, Claire. While searching for more drugs, he comes across Charles Jacobs, who has reinvented himself as a showman selling “Portraits in Lightning.” He demonstrates this technology on a young woman named Cathy Morse, who is dazzled by the moving image of herself in a beautiful dress. Jacobs finds Jamie and administers an electrical treatment that eliminates Jamie’s addiction-related compulsions. Though frightened when he experiences blackouts and nightmares as aftereffects of the treatment, Jamie agrees to work as Jacobs’s assistant out of gratitude. Jamie soon becomes suspicious when Cathy Morse’s father assaults Jacobs, claiming that his lightning portrait convinced her to rob a jewelry store. Before Jamie can make sense of what had happened to Morse, Jacobs abruptly leaves, but not before pointing Jamie toward more permanent work.

In 2008, Jamie works as the foreman at the Wolfjaw recording studio in Colorado. His boss, Hugh Yates, informs him that Charles Jacobs has reinvented himself once again as a touring revival pastor, healing people in each city he visits. Jacobs previously cured Hugh of Ménière’s disease. As an aftereffect, Hugh occasionally experiences visions of shapes and colors, which he calls “prismatics.” Curious about what has become of Jacobs, he invites Jamie to attend his next revival show. During the show, Jamie is struck by the sensationalism Jacobs deploys to carry out his scam. Meanwhile, Hugh is upset when the show causes a particularly strong resurgence of the prismatics.

Jamie develops a relationship with Brianna Donlin, the daughter of Hugh’s secretary, who helps him conduct research on the people who have been healed by Jacobs. He learns that many of them have engaged in various forms of self-harm, leading to their hospitalization or, in some cases, death. Brianna points Jamie to Jacobs’s estate in upstate New York. Jamie visits Jacobs, where he learns of his old minister’s contempt for the people he heals. The show is a means to his true end: the experiments into what Jacobs refers to as “secret electricity.” He invites Jamie to work with him in renewing popular interest in electricity. Jamie declines, criticizing Jacobs’s disregard for human life.

Over the next five years, Jamie settles into late middle age. Brianna marries a lawyer, and Jamie meets his grandniece while attending her birthday party in Harlow. In 2014, Jamie receives a letter from Jacobs, who offers him work once again. This time, he entices Jamie by revealing that Astrid Soderberg has come to him, hoping to find a miracle cure for her terminal lung cancer. Jamie reluctantly accepts when he learns that Jacobs will refuse to help her if Jamie declines. Jacobs uses a new electrical device to cure Astrid, but during her treatment, a voice speaks through her, indicating the existence of an entity called Mother, which inhabits another world beyond life.

Jamie fulfills his end of the deal when Astrid recovers from cancer. He and Astrid’s fiancée, Jenny Knowlton, assist Jacobs in performing an experiment that will allow him to glimpse the world that Astrid referenced during her treatment. Jacobs has Jenny kill a woman named Mary Fay, who had variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD). He uses the power of a thunderstorm to revive Mary Fay from death, allowing her to report her experience of the other world. During the experiment, the revived Mary Fay comes into contact with both Jacobs and Jamie, allowing them to briefly experience the other world firsthand. In the other world, the dead are marched through a ruined city by giant ant-like creatures. Mother is revealed to be a monstrous entity in this world. Mother reveals that Patsy and Morrie Jacobs now serve at the mercy of the entities who inhabit “the Null.” She then attempts to escape into the world of the living through the mouth of Mary Fay. Jamie stops Mother’s escape by shooting Mary Fay’s corpse, breaking the connection. Jacobs dies during the experiment, horrified by the truth.

Three years later, Jamie lives in Hawaii near his brother, Conrad, who is revealed to have experienced aftereffects from his treatment after all. Conrad attempted to kill his boyfriend and die by suicide, echoing the effects of many others who have been cured by Jacobs. Jamie escapes being implicated in the deaths of Mary Fay and Jacobs but wonders how much longer he might live before he confronts Mother once again.