Phillippa Pride, King's editor at his UK publisher, Hodder, described 11/22/63 as 'the best 'What if.?' novel I have ever read,' promising that, at 1,000 pages in length, it combines 'the best of Stephen King's intimate suspense stories with the scope of an epic'. JG Ballard wrote a short story in the 1960s called The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race, and Kennedy's promiscuous love life was also the subject of Jed Mercurio's 2009 novel American Adulterer.Īlternate versions of American history are also popular, from Philip Roth's novel The Plot Against America to the newly released Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics by Jeff Greenfield.īut King promises to bring his own unique skills to the project. Stephen Baxter presented an alternate version in which JFK survived the attack, in the 1996 novel Voyage. Don DeLillo explored the assassination in his novel Libra, while James Ellroy made it the stuff of noir fiction in his book American Tabloid, the first volume of his Underworld USA trilogy, whose subsequent volumes track the fallout from the killing. In writing 11/22/63, King joins a considerable roster of novelists who have tackled the subject of Kennedy's life and death.

But will Jake succeed in his attempt to change history? And if so, what will happen next? Jake duly makes the journey, and finds himself meeting not only troubled loner Lee Harvey Oswald, but also a beautiful school librarian, Sadie Dunhill, set to become the love of his life. Al enlists Jake on a mission to try to prevent the assassination of the 35th president of the United States by returning to the days of Elvis, James Dean, big cars and root beer. Epping's era-hopping habit begins when he learns that his friend, Al, who runs the local diner, is harbouring a portal to the year 1958 in his storeroom.

Stephen king november 22 1963