Agreed. I'm letting my 15 year old boy read Salem's Lot. After just having read it. And I'm a firm believer in traditional, and Biblical morality. But here's the thing. I filter all the time. I hear and see things continuously that I don't like (more than 90% of my practice is criminal defense, about 500 clients a year; and the rest is divorce/custody, and you wouldn't believe what comes out in discovery in those cases; plus I just live in this world with a fairly wide circle of friends and acquaintances, from high school to college, to Army friends, to law school friends and on), but that's the world we live in and I think my older kids, 15 is about right, need to learn to face and deal with such things rather than be taught they aren't there. Because they are. I've read the Bible through, several times, and am working on it again (5 chapters a day gets you through it in about 9 months), and it doesn't sugar coat anything. Murder, adultery, infanticide, dishonesty, evil of every form, is displayed for all to see. I believe for the reason that we can know they are real and must be faced and dealt with. Because evil, and good for that matter, always have a price (FYI: it is this insight that I believe King has that makes him so interesting a writer to me; and a reason I loved Desperation so much). When they were younger, I shielded them, and they don't have to know details about people they know (though if I remember my high school and junior high days they're probably farther along than they'd let on to me), but fiction is a great place to process the face of evil.
Kelly
I was 15 when I read Salem's Lot, my first SK read. Picked it up after seeing the mini series on tv.