After his final confrontation with the Man in Black in a remote mountain Golgotha, an exhausted Roland awakes on the beach of the Western Sea and is immediately attacked by a shoreline monster known as a lobstrosity. Roland kills the clawed creature, but not before it bites off two of his fingers and half of one big toe. Fighting off the delirium brought on by the lobstrosity’s poison, Roland forces himself along the beach where he discovers three freestanding doorways that lead into our world. The first opens onto New York, 1987, and the mind of a heroin addict called Eddie Dean. The second leads to 1964 and the divided personality of Odetta Holmes/Detta Walker, an African American woman who has lost the bottom half of her legs but gained a second, psychotic self. The third door leads to 1977 and the mind of a psychopath called The Pusher, the very criminal responsible for Odetta’s injuries. Roland’s task is to make Eddie and Odetta into gunslingers before raging Detta destroys them all, and before the Pusher can continue his bloody killing spree.
