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-Worlds 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?