SLOW READ: The Stand reading schedule
Welcome to Welcome to Slow Read The Stand. We are your hosts Sarah Stewart Holland and Laura Tremaine
This is the fifth episode of Slow Read The Stand.
If you prefer to read instead of listen, below is a cleaned up transcript of the episodes as well as links to all the books and Substacks we mentioned in this episode…and several fun bonus links and videos!
Sarah: We are currently reading Stephen King’s The Stand. Today, we’re diving into Chapters 43 and 44. Society has fully collapsed, new groups are forming, and it’s time to answer the age-old question: What is more dangerous—a tornado or a woman scorned?
Laura: I really relished the tornado scene because it happened in Oklahoma—my home state! My tiny little hometown, Ardmore, actually gets a mention when King is rattling off empty towns. Though, to be fair, he says it burned to the ground.
Sarah: Before we get to the weather, a quick reminder: our third book club meeting is next week, March 18th. We are at the halfway point! If you want the full experience—the Zooms, my Spotify playlist of every song mentioned in the book, and our rewatch of the 1994 film Outbreak.
Chapter 43: Nick, Tom, and the Oklahoma Sky
Sarah: We start with Nick Andros meeting Tom Cullen on the Oklahoma-Kansas border. We think we’re encountering a dead body, but it’s just a very, very drunk Tom passed out in the road.
Laura: I wonder how King decides whose backstory you get. With Lucy Swan, he says her pandemic story is like everybody else’s—awful. But we meet Tom right when Nick does. King has said in On Writing that he’s often meeting the characters as we are.
Sarah: There’s an urgency now. I underlined this: “Dreams were only dreams, but he did feel an inner urge to hurry... a subconscious command.” Everyone is feeling it. They’re dreaming of Mother Abagail in Nebraska or the Dark Man in the corn.
Sarah: I’m struck by how quickly society regresses to a total fear of infection. You cannot have an accident. There’s no one to save you. It’s a vulnerability we don’t usually deal with.
Laura: How did you feel about Tom Cullen? In 2026, the repeated use of the “R-word” is shocking and offensive. Nick uses it clinically, but when Julie Lawry says it, Nick slaps her across the face. So much slapping in the 70s!
Sarah: Nick has a sixth sense about people; he understands he should look out for Tom. But then King puts them in the pitch black with corpses in a storm shelter!
Laura: As an Oklahoman who has lived through tornadoes, they don’t just drop out of the sky like that. But I loved the line about the animal instinct of sensing a radical drop in air pressure.
Sarah: They both feel the presence of the Dark Man in that shelter. I think he shows up where there is the most fear. It’s like the monsters in It or a Boggart in Harry Potter—he manifests as your dread.
Laura: Then they meet Julie Lawry. She has a “hard, mirthless shine.” She asks Nick for sex almost immediately. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a 40-something mom, but I’m not just going to be on a CVS floor with a stranger! But I buy it more because she was the pursuer. She’s scary—I envision Sydney Sweeney in The White Lotus
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Chapter 44: Larry, Nadine, and “The Before”
Sarah: We start with Larry. He’s sun-poisoned and dehydrated. In the last section, Stu talked about walking as healing, but for Larry, walking is depleting. He’s having an identity crisis. He lost Rita, and his inner monologue is a constant refrain: “I ain’t no nice guy.”
Sarah: He encounters Nadine Cross and Joe. I do not like Joe. I know he’s a child, but he’s creepy. King keeps calling him “Chinese-eyed” and talking about his skin—it hit me as a little weird.
Laura: I was picturing him as Mowgli—skinny and in his underwear—but Mowgli is sweet. Joe is feral. He has a butcher knife as a comfort item.
Sarah: Larry wakes up and sees their footprints in the dewy grass. King goes out of his way to say Larry isn’t a detective; anyone could see them! But Larry’s senses are heightened because there’s no TV or cell phones. He’s moving away from grief and toward survival.
Sarah: I was worried Larry would be drawn to the dark side. When Mother Abagail shows up in his dream and he listens to her, I was so happy! Nadine, on the other hand, screams at Mother Abagail in the dream.
Laura: I desperately need to know your thoughts on Nadine. She’s a 37-year-old virgin. I pictured her like a pretty black-haired princess, like Vanessa in The Little Mermaid.
Sarah: I was picturing her way more hippie! What interested me was how they keep talking about “before.” It reminds me of when my child was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. You have those hard breaks where you don’t even remember what life was like before.
Laura: Larry doesn’t even tell them he was famous! He doesn’t even play “Can You Dig Your Man?” around the campfire. It’s very equalizing.
Sarah: Mother Abagail tells them to come to Nebraska so they can get to Colorado. The Rockies are a natural barrier. But Larry gives in to Nadine and they go to Stovington first, where they see Franny and Stu’s message. Everyone is dead. We’re going to Nebraska, and Nadine faints.
The Blue and Lonely Section of Hell
Sarah: I have an addendum. I liked King’s use of the word pissant. I just read Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, which defines a pissant as someone who thinks he’s so damn smart he can never keep his mouth shut.
Laura: I like that definition. It’s a good word.
Sarah: We have to end on this quote from Chapter 44. It’s part of Larry’s story:
“No one can tell you what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side or you don’t.”
Laura: It’s good. And it’s true. We’ll see you on the other side.
