11/22/63

11/22/63

Stephen King

Genre: Historical Fiction

Summary (from Goodreads): Life can turn on a dime—or stumble into the extraordinary, as it does for Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine. While grading essays by his GED students, Jake reads a gruesome, enthralling piece penned by janitor Harry Dunning: fifty years ago, Harry somehow survived his father’s sledgehammer slaughter of his entire family. Jake is blown away...but an even more bizarre secret comes to light when Jake’s friend Al, owner of the local diner, enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination. How? By stepping through a portal in the diner’s storeroom, and into the era of Ike and Elvis, of big American cars, sock hops, and cigarette smoke... Finding himself in warmhearted Jodie, Texas, Jake begins a new life. But all turns in the road lead to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald. The course of history is about to be rewritten...and become heart-stoppingly suspenseful.

Review:  I loved this historical fiction novel by Stephen King!  He has this amazing ability to take a hypothetical question (in this case, what would happen if someone could go back in time to try to stop the JFK assassination?) and turn it into a fascinating and impossible to put down story.  Sure, there are a few creepy references to something devilish, and a few disturbingly gory descriptions of violence, but overall this was the unbelievable story of an ordinary man trying to live an ordinary life while trying to do something quite extraordinary.  I didn't know too many of the details around the assassination, so it was interesting and educational to learn more about Lee Harvey Oswald's life and King's take on the conspiracy theories surrounding JFK's assassination.

Rating: 5 stars