Written by Stephen King in 1970, five years before the publication of his first novel, that sentence opens up a world still unknown to many of his readers. It introduces Roland of Gilead, a knight-errant wandering a desolate world that nightmarishly mirrors our own, and begins a spectacular seven-volume epic fantasy - The Dark Tower - that is sure to become an American classic.

Preparing the way for the publication of the saga's concluding volumes, this hardcover edition of The Drawing of the Three, the tension-filled second book in the series, features a special introduction by the author and Phil Hale's 1998 repaintings of the striking illustrations that enriched the original limited edition published by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, in 1987.

After his confrontation with the man in black at the end of The Gunslinger, Roland awakes to find three doors on the beach of Mid-World's Western Sea - each leading to New York City but at three different moments in time. Through these doors, Roland must "draw" three figures crucial to his quest for the Dark Tower. In 1987, he finds Eddie Dean, The Prisoner, a heroin addict. In 1964, he meets Odetta Holmes, the Lady of Shadows, a young African-American heiress who lost her lower legs in a subway accident and gained a second personality that rages within her. And in 1977, he encounters Jack Mort, Death, a pusher responsible for cruelties beyond imagining. Has Roland found new companions to form the ka-tet of his quest? Or has he unleashed something else entirely?