I mentioned my dilemma to a secretary in the office where I worked. She shrieked with glee, reached into the bottom drawer of her desk, and pulled out Watchers, by Dean Koontz. “I just finished this,” she said. “It’s soooooo good! But I’m warning you—once you start it, it’ll be impossible to put it down.”

I’d never before read a book by Dean Koontz (although I’ve read dozens since then), so I didn’t know how the author could grab you by the throat on page 1 and hold you captive until the last paragraph. His descriptions are so vivid that, after all these years of being a fan, I have memories of places that I may have seen with my physical eyes or read about in one of his books—I’m not sure. He plays your emotions like Mozart played the piano. Thus, I was unprepared for the metaphorical “trip” I was about to take.

Those of you who’ve read Watchers know that the setting of the book just happens to be rural California. So you can imagine my state of mind two nights later as I lay beside my sleeping husband, reading by flashlight, at or approaching the climax of the book, spellbound and terrified. A wind came up, and claws—pardon me—the limbs of trees started scratching at the windows. The world as we know it had entirely disappeared for me, and my life was in the author’s hands. There was no going on until—come what may—I finished that book.

Perhaps five years later, I was teaching a course to called “Fundamentals of English” to high school juniors and seniors who, for one reason or another, had difficulty in mainstream English classes. The class was composed, in about equal parts, of students who were new to the country and still learning English; students who had learning disabilities that affected their ability to read; and students who simply didn’t read, for a variety of emotional and cultural reasons.

One young man in that class was Jon, a kid who came from a family of nonreaders and regarded school as a purgatory that had to be endured before he could get on with his “real” life. He had long been convinced that reading was tedious and boring and that, once he managed to decode the words, text had nothing to offer him. It was just something that came between him and the thing he really wanted to do—work on his truck. Jon was one of the mostly fundamentally nice human beings I ever met, and although he forgave me on sight, I was still just another in a long line of English teachers who was going to try to make him read and, more than likely, make him feel stupid because he couldn’t.

There was no getting around it: reading a book—any book, including a book for young readers or a book in another language—was a requirement to pass each quarter of my class. And passing my class was a requirement for graduation. From the start, Jon assumed that he wouldn’t pass, wouldn’t graduate, and that was that.

From conversations with him and the short readings we did in class, I knew that Jon—somewhere along the way—had mastered the basic mechanics of reading. He could decipher text and—intellectually, at least—understand its meaning. The disconnect occurred somewhere between the thinking part of his brain and the feeling part: basically, he could read, but he just couldn’t care about reading. Without any kind of emotional response to text, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to focus attention on it.

I don’t remember the moment of inspiration, but at some point, I went to The Bookworm and picked up a used copy of Watchers. I took it to school on a Friday and gave it to Jon. I said, “All I’m asking you to do is read the first chapter. You come back and tell me you’ve read the first chapter, and I promise I’ll never bug you about reading again. I can’t promise that you’ll pass the class, but I won’t try to get you to read any more. Okay?”

"How long is the first chapter?” he asked doubtfully, flipping through the pages. Finally he agreed. “Okay. I’ll try it.”

When Jon didn’t say anything Monday, I figured he’d probably forgotten his promise, postponed the task indefinitely, or found it too difficult to read text that he clearly thought was beyond his abilities. Two weeks passed before he came to me after class and handed me the book. “I finished it,” he said. “That was a good book.”

Jon passed the class, reading two or three more books in the process, and graduated. In September of the following year, he dropped by my classroom with another book in his hand—the latest paperback release by Dean Koontz. “I read this over the summer,” he said. “I thought you might like to have it.”

This is a true story. I was reminded of it by a present my son Darrell got me for Christmas this year: Life Expectancy, by Dean Koontz.

Thank you Darrell. Thank you Jon. And thank you Mr. Koontz.