Benjamin "Ben" Mears is an author and one-time resident of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine. Seeking a break from his career after the death of his wife, Miranda, and a current case of writer's block, he returns to the Lot. He decides to write about the town's haunted, dilapidated house, at the same time developing a passionate romance with college graduate and town resident Susan Norton. Its currently unknown if in between that story and the Wolves of the Calla, the two ever realized that some vampires survived and spread again or not.