After a boy disappears and is presumed dead, twelve-year-old Gordie LaChance and his three friends set out to find his body along the railway tracks.

During the course of their journey, the boys, who all come from abusive or dysfunctional families, come to grips with death and the harsh truths of growing up in a small factory town that does not seem to offer them much of a future.

In 1960, Gordie and his three friends − Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp and Vern Tessio − learn that a gang of hooligans led by John "Ace" Merrill have accidentally discovered the dead body of a missing boy named Ray Brower, who was hit by a train.

Over the course of the narrative, the adult Gordie recalls his first published story, Stud City, about the life of a simple man named Edward "Chico" May whose older brother also died.

While at a resting point, Gordie tells his friends another story, "The Revenge of Lard-Ass Hogan", in which the titular Davie "Lard-Ass" Hogan exacts vengeance on the town locals for ridiculing his wide girth by downing a whole bottle of castor oil before engaging in the town's annual pie-eating contest and vomiting on the previous year's champion, which causes a chain reaction that nauseates the entire audience.

In the present day, Gordie tells how he learned of Chris's death after he was fatally stabbed while trying to stop an argument in a restaurant, about the deaths of Vern and Teddy (in a house fire and car accident, respectively), about his successful writing career, and about his recent visit to Castle Rock, where he found that Ace has become an alcoholic and a worker at the town's mill.

His father had told him about a dead dog he had spotted on railroad tracks, prompting MacLeod and his friends to go looking for “the body” one day after school.