Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald have gone to a secluded lakeside house in western Maine for an off-beat romantic day off . Gerald , a successful lawyer with an aggressive personality , has been able to reinvigorate the couple 's sex life by handcuffing Jessie to the bed . Jessie has enjoyed the game before , but suddenly balks . As Gerald starts to crawl on top of her , knowing her protests are real , he stops only after she kicks him , causing Gerald to have a fatal heart attack , falling on top of her . Trying to wake him up , she manages to make him sit by pushing him with her feet , but since he was dead already , he falls off the bed . Jessie is alone in the house , unable to move off the bed or call for help . Eventually , a stray dog wanders in through a door that has blown open and starts feeding on Gerald 's body . Jessie is troubled by a terrifying , deformed apparition , whom she initially mistakes for the spirit of her long-dead father . Jessie begins to think of this visitor as the " Space Cowboy " ( after a line from a Steve Miller song , " The Joker " ) , saying out loud that he is " not anyone " , and that he was only " made of moonlight " . A combination of panic and thirst causes Jessie to hallucinate . She hears voices in her head , each ostensibly the voice of a person in her life , primarily " The Goodwife " or " Goody Burlingame " ( a Puritanical version of Jessie ) , and Ruth Neary ( an old college friend ) and Nora Callighan ( her ex-psychiatrist ) , neither of whom Jessie has spoken to in years . These voices represent different parts of her personality that help her extract a painful childhood memory she has kept suppressed for many years . She was sexually abused by her father at age ten during a solar eclipse that occurred in her hometown . She also begins to realize how unhappy her marriage had been , and that she sacrificed a potentially happy life for the security of Gerald 's paycheck by being a trophy wife without children . Jessie makes increasingly desperate attempts to escape , first by trying to break the headboard she is cuffed to , then by trying to slip off the bed and push it to the bureau where the keys are placed . One of the voices in her head tells her that if she stays another night , the Space Cowboy will take a part of her to add to his trophy " fishing creel " filled with jewelry and human bones . Jessie escapes the handcuffs by slicing her wrist open on a piece of broken glass , giving herself a degloving injury to lubricate her skin enough for the cuffs to slide off her right hand . She is then able to move behind the bed , push it to the bureau , and use one of the keys to unlock her left handcuff . She passes out from blood loss . When she awakens , the Space Cowboy has made his way back into the house . Jessie confronts him and throws her wedding ring at his box of jewelry and bones , thinking that is what he wanted all along . Jessie then runs out of the house . She makes it into her car and escapes the house , but is terrified to discover the Space Cowboy sitting in the back seat . Jessie crashes and is knocked unconscious . Months later , Jessie is recuperating and being looked after by a nurse . An ambitious attorney at Gerald 's law firm assists her in covering up the incident to protect her and the law firm from scandal , as well as assisting her in her recuperation . Jessie writes to Ruth Neary , detailing what happened after the incident and her recuperation process . She details a serial necrophile and murderer named Raymond Andrew Joubert , who is making his way through Maine ; he was the Space Cowboy , confirmed when Jessie confronted him in a court hearing and Joubert mimicked Jessie 's arm positions while she was in the handcuffs . He also repeats her frightened exclamations , when she thought he was the Space Cowboy apparition , that Joubert was " not anyone " and " made of moonlight " . In the novel 's epilogue , Jessie mentions that the dog , having been abandoned , was shot and killed by the police . After mailing her letter to Ruth , Jessie is finally able to sleep without nightmares , having made peace with her childhood abuse and her husband 's death . In May 2014 , '' Deadline Hollywood '' reported that Mike Flanagan was set to direct a film adaptation . In an interview with Rue Morgue in September 2016 , Flanagan said that the film adaptation would premiere on Netflix . He did not state when the film would premiere or whether Stephen King would be involved . In October 2016 , Deadline reported that Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood will star in the film as Jessie and Gerald Burlingame . On October 17 , 2016 , Flanagan tweeted indicating the first day of production had begun
solar eclipse
Solar eclipse of July 20, 1963
Gerald's Game