When Jamie is in his 50s, he and Hugh rediscover their healer in a new identity that perfectly combines his preacher and huckster sides (if they were ever very separate): Evangelist C. Hugh is another one of Jacobs' 'cures,' a musician who lost his hearing. There Jamie finds the good life for years, staying off drugs and working for that contact, Hugh Yates, at his popular recording studio. But he stays straight and stays on as Jacobs' assistant until the older man disappears again, leaving him a train ticket and a job contact in Colorado. Jacobs recognizes him, takes him in and, just like that, cures him of his addiction with what he calls 'secret electricity.' Although Jacobs says it's just 'a minor restructuring of your brainwaves,' it's a terrifying experience - Jamie suffers memory loss, painful compulsive behavior and grotesque dreams. He's at rock bottom, broke and fired from a country band in Tulsa, Okla., when he wanders through the fairgrounds and discovers Jacobs, no longer reverend, running an eerie electricity-based carnival scam. Unfortunately, in his 20s, a bone-shattering motorcycle accident launches him into addiction, to heroin, morphine, whatever he can get his hands on. Starting out as a rhythm guitar player for a local band called the Chrome Roses, he launches himself into a career. Jamie is also charged up by his newly discovered musical talent. They lose their virginity together during a spectacular lightning storm at a mountain peak called Skytop - a place Jamie knows about from Jacobs, and where they will meet again much later. Jamie is disturbed, but he's a teenager with other things on his mind, such as his alluring girlfriend, Astrid. Heartbroken and enraged, he preaches a barn-burning denunciation of faith and God that comes to be known as the Terrible Sermon, and then he's gone - after confessing to Jamie that his brother's 'cure' was neither science nor miracle but a con job. Then Jacobs loses Patsy and Morrie, and things change. Using an electrified belt of his own invention, Jacobs restores Con's speech, but swears the kids to secrecy. Jamie becomes close to Jacobs, so he turns to the minister when his brother Conrad loses his voice after a skiing accident. (He has a fascination with electricity.) They like his young son, Morrie, and the boys crush on his pretty wife, Patsy.

The congregation likes him, especially its kids, who enjoy the science experiments he entertains them with. Jacobs starts out as a benign figure, the new preacher at the local Methodist church.

Revival by stephen king