11/22/63 by Stephen King

Title: 11/22/63
Author: Stephen King
Format: PB
Pages: 849
Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Scribner, 2011
ISBN-13:    9781451627282
Series: Stand Alone

Favorite Quote:  And isn't that what A+ writing is supposed to do?  Evoke a response?

Synopsis:  On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Stephen King’s heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination -- a thousand page tour de force. —King sweeps readers back in time to another moment -- a real life moment -- when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history.

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students -- a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane -- and insanely possible -- mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life -- a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.A tribute to a simpler era and a devastating exercise in escalating suspense, 11/22/63 is Stephen King at his epic best. 

Review:  Well, my all-time favorite author has done it again.  He's written a book so completely enthralling that you cannot, for the life of you, bear to put it down.  While it's a step away from his usual horror genre, this book is chilling in a way that is horrific in its own way, while being touching and thought-provoking and just plain good, all at the same time.  I cannot even find the words to say how much I loved this book.

Rating:  10 / 10