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11/22/63: A Novel Paperback – Illustrated, July 24, 2012
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Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Now a miniseries from Hulu starring James Franco
ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963, THREE SHOTS RANG OUT IN DALLAS, PRESIDENT KENNEDY DIED, AND THE WORLD CHANGED. WHAT IF YOU COULD CHANGE IT BACK?
In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King—who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer—takes readers on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.
It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away—a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than fifty years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life—like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963—turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination.
So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore. Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.
- Print length880 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherScribner
- Publication dateJuly 24, 2012
- Dimensions6 x 2.2 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101451627297
- ISBN-13978-1451627299
- Lexile measureHL810L
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On Monday, March 25, Lee came walking up Neely Street carrying a long package wrapped in brown paper. Peering through a tiny crack in the curtains, I could see the words REGISTERED and INSURED stamped on it in big red letters. For the first time I thought he seemed furtive and nervous, actually looking around at his exterior surroundings instead of at the spooky furniture deep in his head. I knew what was in the package: a 6.5mm Carcano rifle—also known as a Mannlicher-Carcano—complete with scope, purchased from Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago. Five minutes after he climbed the outside stairs to the second floor, the gun Lee would use to change history was in a closet above my head. Marina took the famous pictures of him holding it just outside my living room window six days later, but I didn’t see it. That was a Sunday, and I was in Jodie. As the tenth grew closer, those weekends with Sadie had become the most important, the dearest, things in my life.
9
I came awake with a jerk, hearing someone mutter “Still not too late” under his breath. I realized it was me and shut up.
Sadie murmured some thick protest and turned over in bed. The familiar squeak of the springs locked me in place and time: the Candlewood Bungalows, April 5, 1963. I fumbled my watch from the nightstand and peered at the luminous numbers. It was quarter past two in the morning, which meant it was actually the sixth of April.
Still not too late.
Not too late for what? To back off, to let well enough alone? Or bad enough, come to that? The idea of backing off was attractive, God knew. If I went ahead and things went wrong, this could be my last night with Sadie. Ever.
Even if you do have to kill him, you don’t have to do it right away.
True enough. Oswald was going to relocate to New Orleans for awhile after the attempt on the general’s life—another shitty apartment, one I’d already visited—but not for two weeks. That would give me plenty of time to stop his clock. But I sensed it would be a mistake to wait very long. I might find reasons to keep on waiting. The best one was beside me in this bed: long, lovely, and smoothly naked. Maybe she was just another trap laid by the obdurate past, but that didn’t matter, because I loved her. And I could envision a scenario—all too clearly—where I’d have to run after killing Oswald. Run where? Back to Maine, of course. Hoping I could stay ahead of the cops just long enough to get to the rabbit-hole and escape into a future where Sadie Dunhill would be . . . well . . . about eighty years old. If she were alive at all. Given her cigarette habit, that would be like rolling six the hard way.
I got up and went to the window. Only a few of the bungalows were occupied on this early-spring weekend. There was a mud- or manure-splattered pickup truck with a trailer full of what looked like farm implements behind it. An Indian motorcycle with a sidecar. A couple of station wagons. And a two-tone Plymouth Fury. The moon was sliding in and out of thin clouds and it wasn’t possible to make out the color of the car’s lower half by that stuttery light, but I was pretty sure I knew what it was, anyway.
I pulled on my pants, undershirt, and shoes. Then I slipped out of the cabin and walked across the courtyard. The chilly air bit at my bed-warm skin, but I barely felt it. Yes, the car was a Fury, and yes, it was white over red, but this one wasn’t from Maine or Arkansas; the plate was Oklahoma, and the decal in the rear window read GO, SOONERS. I peeked in and saw a scatter of textbooks. Some student, maybe headed south to visit his folks on spring break. Or a couple of horny teachers taking advantage of the Candlewood’s liberal guest policy.
Just another not-quite-on-key chime as the past harmonized with itself. I touched the trunk, as I had back in Lisbon Falls, then returned to the bungalow. Sadie had pushed the sheet down to her waist, and when I came in, the draft of cool air woke her up. She sat, holding the sheet over her breasts, then let it drop when she saw it was me.
“Can’t sleep, honey?”
“I had a bad dream and went out for some air.”
“What was it?”
I unbuttoned my jeans, kicked off my loafers. “Can’t remember.”
“Try. My mother always used to say if you tell your dreams, they won’t come true.”
I got into bed with her wearing nothing but my undershirt. “My mother used to say if you kiss your honey, they won’t come true.”
“Did she actually say that?”
“No.”
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “it sounds possible. Let’s try it.”
We tried it.
One thing led to another.
10
Afterward, she lit a cigarette. I lay watching the smoke drift up and turn blue in the occasional moonlight coming through the half-drawn curtains. I’d never leave the curtains that way at Neely Street, I thought. At Neely Street, in my other life, I’m always alone but still careful to close them all the way. Except when I’m peeking, that is. Lurking.
Just then I didn’t like myself very much.
“George?”
I sighed. “That’s not my name.”
“I know.”
I looked at her. She inhaled deeply, enjoying her cigarette guiltlessly, as people do in the Land of Ago. “I don’t have any inside information, if that’s what you’re thinking. But it stands to reason. The rest of your past is made up, after all. And I’m glad. I don’t like George all that much. It’s kind of . . . what’s that word you use sometimes? . . . kind of dorky.”
“How does Jake suit you?”
“As in Jacob?”
“Yes.”
“I like it.” She turned to me. “In the Bible, Jacob wrestled an angel. And you’re wrestling, too. Aren’t you?”
“I suppose I am, but not with an angel.” Although Lee Oswald didn’t make much of a devil, either. I liked George de Mohren--schildt better for the devil role. In the Bible, Satan’s a tempter who makes the offer and then stands aside. I hoped de Mohrenschildt was like that.
Sadie snubbed her cigarette. Her voice was calm, but her eyes were dark. “Are you going to be hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going away? Because if you have to go away, I’m not sure I can stand it. I would have died before I said it when I was there, but Reno was a nightmare. Losing you for good . . .” She shook her head slowly. “No, I’m not sure I could stand that.”
“I want to marry you,” I said.
“My God,” she said softly. “Just when I’m ready to say it’ll never happen, Jake-alias-George says right now.”
“Not right now, but if the next week goes the way I hope it does . . . will you?”
“Of course. But I do have to ask one teensy question.”
“Am I single? Legally single? Is that what you want to know?”
She nodded.
“I am,” I said.
She let out a comic sigh and grinned like a kid. Then she sobered. “Can I help you? Let me help you.”
The thought turned me cold, and she must have seen it. Her lower lip crept into her mouth. She bit down on it with her teeth. “That bad, then,” she said musingly.
“Let’s put it this way: I’m currently close to a big machine full of sharp teeth, and it’s running full speed. I won’t allow you next to me while I’m monkeying with it.”
“When is it?” she asked. “Your . . . I don’t know . . . your date with destiny?”
“Still to be determined.” I had a feeling that I’d said too much already, but since I’d come this far, I decided to go a little farther. “Something’s going to happen this Wednesday night. Something I have to witness. Then I’ll decide.”
“Is there no way I can help you?”
“I don’t think so, honey.”
“If it turns out I can—”
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate that. And you really will marry me?”
“Now that I know your name is Jake? Of course.”
Product details
- Publisher : Scribner; Illustrated edition (July 24, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 880 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1451627297
- ISBN-13 : 978-1451627299
- Lexile measure : HL810L
- Item Weight : 2.25 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 2.2 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8 in Alternate History Science Fiction (Books)
- #188 in American Literature (Books)
- #384 in Suspense Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His first crime thriller featuring Bill Hodges, MR MERCEDES, won the Edgar Award for best novel and was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award. Both MR MERCEDES and END OF WATCH received the Goodreads Choice Award for the Best Mystery and Thriller of 2014 and 2016 respectively.
King co-wrote the bestselling novel Sleeping Beauties with his son Owen King, and many of King's books have been turned into celebrated films and television series including The Shawshank Redemption, Gerald's Game and It.
King was the recipient of America's prestigious 2014 National Medal of Arts and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for distinguished contribution to American Letters. In 2007 he also won the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He lives with his wife Tabitha King in Maine.
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In The Dead Zone, Stephen King posed the familiar three o'clock in the morning question about what someone should do if given the opportunity to kill Hitler before he came to power. There, psychic Johnny Smith must decide whether he should assassinate senate candidate (and ersatz Hitler) Greg Stillson, thus changing the apocalyptic future he has foreseen. In 11/22/63, he poses a similar question, but this time gives his protagonist, Jake Epping, a man who exists in 2011 Maine, the chance to change the past. Jake, you see, has the opportunity to prevent Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating President John F. Kennedy.
Time travel books are often the source of headaches. Very few are as well conceived as classics like Matheson's Bid Time Return (a.k.a. Somewhere in Time), Jack Finney's Time and Again, or Lewis Shiner's Glimpses. Then there are the inherent time anomalies involved, which many resent because they just get in the way of telling a good yarn. But, as with its predecessor, Under the Dome, 11/22/63 is a fine book, once you accept its premise.
And it's a doozy. Thirty five year old English teacher Epping is introduced to what might be classified as one of King's "thinnys," a break in the fabric of one reality which permits those who utilize them to enter another reality, in this case Lisbon Falls, Maine, as it existed on September 9, 1958, at 11:58 a.m. Al Templeton, the dying man who introduces Jake to this anomaly, has already done some research, discovering that actions taken after passing through that door do indeed affect the future. He also knows that everything resets to "normal" once one passes back through to modern day, and subsequently re-enters.
Jake's first experiment with altering time brings him to Derry, Maine, one of King's favorite locales (IT fans will be cheered to hear that Jake interacts with Richie Tozier and Beverly Marsh). He goes there to prevent the personal apocalypse of Harry Dunning, one of his GED prep students, who broke Epping's heart with a gut wrenching essay that centered on the tragic events of October 31, 1958, where, as a boy, Harry lost his entire family. It's on that night that Jake first learns some of the trickier ins and outs of time travel, unwritten rules which will have a profound effect on his existence in the world of 1958 to 1963. These rules, which Epping discusses in terms of "harmonics," "echoes," and through analogies to the famous "butterfly effect," all boil down to one basic tenet: history wants to follow a certain path, indeed actively strives to do so, so interfering in essentially preordained events can result in horrible consequences.
Despite this foretaste of disaster, Jake, now an experienced time traveler who thinks he can handle its pitfalls, decides to pursue the goal Al Templeton was unable to, namely preventing JFK's untimely demise. Traveling under the name of George Amberson (a nod to Booth Tarkington?), King does a wonderful job of describing a man out of time, evoking his wonder at the smells, tastes, and sensations of another time, touching on the advantages and disadvantages of each era. Jake establishes himself as a teacher in 1958 Maine, supplementing his income with strategic wagers on sporting events (later, this practice provides a grim example of the inflexibility of history).
Eventually, he moves to Texas to actively pursue his goal. He spends his time shadowing Lee Harvey Oswald, in order to assure himself that the assassin was in fact acting alone. He has to be careful, both not to influence events, or to reveal that he is a man living in another time. To complicate matters, he falls in love with Sadie Dunhill, the local librarian, who proves to be his soul mate. Although she's troubled by his strangeness and secrecy, Sadie returns his love.
King reveals the substantial research he (and pal Russ Dorr) have done on the era in general and the Kennedy assassination in particular as November 22, 1963 draws near, describing the day to day life of Lee and Marina Oswald, and spotlighting figures in their orbit, like geologist George de Mohrenschildt. The fated day arrives, and, the past proving to be "obdurate," tragedy ensues, but not of a nature you might expect. And, history having been changed, an alternate timeline springs into existence. Having the ability to hit the reset button by re-entering his native timeline, Jake has to decide whether he can live with the consequences of his actions. His decision, while considered, unselfish and mature, is heartbreaking.
11/22/63 is a big book, but one which is quickly and avidly consumed. It feels very personal to King--started before the publication of his breakout novel Carrie, it is in effect a time machine for the author, a link between his salad days and his later success. King takes his gift for creating relatable characters to new heights, providing the perfect tragic hero in Jake, and complementing him with a suitable mate, the indomitable Sadie. Even the smallest of supporting characters spring to vivid life, their very presence advancing an already compelling, textured tale. King writes with verve and pathos, effectively combining what is at its heart a (forgive this) timeless romance with an edge-of-your-seat thriller, as the countdown towards that fateful day in Dallas proceeds.
The main character in 11/22/63 is Jake Epping, a teacher in present-day Maine. Through a friend, Jake learns of a time travel wormhole that always takes him back to the same day in September in 1958. Jake decides to go back in time to do two things:
- Prevent a local man from murdering his wife and most of his children
- Prevent Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating JFK (hence the 11/22/63 title)
So Jake goes back in time and while he is waiting for both of these events to approach - there are five years between 1958 and 1963 after all - he begins to develop his own life. Sidenote: he didn't just kill Oswald right away because he was trying to get some better confirmation that Oswald actually did it (the book explains this a little better). Anyways, Jake takes a job, rents an apartment, continues to research/follow Oswald, and ends up falling in love with a woman named Sadie, all of which make his decision to change the past and then head back to the future more difficult to carry out. I was really surprised by the Sadie thread - Jake's relationship with Sadie was a very sweet and poignant part of the story. I even cried a bit.
Of course, as soon as Jake starts messing with events in the past, the future starts changing and that the past will do whatever it can to keep him from making changes, further complicating his decision to prevent the JFK assassination. He also learns that seemingly minor events in the past continue to repeat or harmonize as he moves forward in time.
Overall, I really liked this book. My only, very minor, complaint is that the timing and the pacing was a little odd. I know that's probably a strange comment about a time travel book, but King sped through some periods and dragged others out. This a book of a brick and most of it is good, but I think King could have sped up some parts a little bit. That said, it was worth the read and if I had more free time, I would have cranked through it even more quickly than I did.
In a nutshell: 3.5 stars. I'm going to try to read some more Stephen King books.
But after watching the miniseries twice, I had to give it a shot.
Well done
Interesting concept
And the usual Stephen King suspense
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Reviewed in Italy on August 11, 2022