Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King

Well now, this was an interesting book. I loved the premise. What happens if the women in the world fell into a deep sleep and men were left to handle things on their own? If you guessed guns and bloodshed, you would be right. I actually don't think King is too far-fetched with this notion.

The folks of Dooling are what you might think of a small Appalachian town. There's a women's prison and we meet some of the inmates and employees of the prison. Immediately, we hate Don Peters, a guard who freely takes what he wants from the inmates and threatens them if they speak up. He was a touch too on the nose to Trump (I assume King intended that). The prison psych doctor is Clint Norcross, whose wife Lila is the town Sheriff.

Lila is called to a homicide scene at a meth lab that is pretty brutal. En route, she clips a woman walking in the middle of the road. Evie Black is beautiful, nearly naked and seemingly crazy. Lila takes her to the prison for a psych eval.

We get into the mundane lives of the Dooling folk when, inexplicably, women start falling asleep and becoming cocooned in a gauze-like fabric.Destroying the fabric to "free the women" leaves them feral and ready to kill the ones who disturb them. Leave them alone and they end up in another place where women are the sole gender.

In this place, they form a pretty decent society and get along well. Back in reality, the men have lost their shit and are tearing up the town. They know Evie Black is the one woman in Dooling who can sleep and wake up so they form a mob (really, that's what it is) to get her.

This book is 700+ pages so much more happens and much more is explained. It really is a good story and it was slightly disheartening to read some of the threats and slurs against women in this book, only because I know they are said on a regular basis in this time.  The Blowtorch Brigade was sickening because I have no doubt that men would take sleeping women and torch them. Because, clearly, it must be the woman's fault - which is touched on here as well. My goodness, women want to wear pants and get abortions! This is their fault!

They threw a bit much into the pot, including a white cop shooting a black person, in my opinion. Not every social injustice needed to be represented. It got slightly overwhelming.

Not my favorite King book but still worth reading!