11/22/63

In 11/22/63, Stephen King's newest book, Jake Epping is an English teacher at the Lisbon Falls, Maine high school. He is 35 years old, divorced and childless. One day Al Templeton, owner of an old diner that Jake patronizes, asks him to come to the diner. Al has something very important to ask Jake. Al has terminal cancer and wants Jake to do something he can’t - stop Lee Harvey Oswald from killing John F. Kennedy.

 There’s a time portal in the storeroom of the diner. It leads to only one day in the past, September 9, 1958. You can go to the past and stay years, but when you come back to 2011 it’s always exactly two minutes later.

As Jake stumbles into the past he uses a different name, George Amberson. Before Jake/George alters the past he wants to make sure Oswald was the real assassin. Was there a conspiracy?

Once Jake arrives in Dallas, Texas he has five years to spy on Oswald. Jake takes a job as an English teacher in a small town. There in Jodie, Texas he meets the love of his life, Sadie, a school librarian.

 Author King evokes the year 1958 so well you feel you’re there. Cars with tailfins whizzing by, early rock on the juke box, rotary phones and cigarette smoke everywhere. This novel has science fiction, romance and characters you’ll remember. Even at 890 pages I read this in three sittings.