11/22/63 by Stephen King

What if you could travel back in time and change history?  I just finished Stephen King's 11/22/63 and it was about a man who finds a way to travel back in time to stop President John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963.   

Jake Epping is a recently divorced English teacher who meets a friend Al claiming to have stumbled on a portal to the past.   But Al is sick and before he passes away he convinces Jake to stop JFKs assassination as a service to the American people. But there is one catch, and that is Al's portal always takes the traveller back to the same moment on September 9, 1958.  Jake has to spend 5 years in the past before he can complete his mission.   

Because of numerous good reviews I dove into this book with high expectations. It was rather engrossing in the first third of the book when Jake travels for the first time and tries to change history in small steps, like saving a friend's family just a month after he arrives.  But when he finally decides to carry out his mission you had to spend 5 years with Jake in the 1960s and that was when it became dragging.  The story picks up again towards the last third of the book as the date of the assassination draws near, and reaches a very engrossing climax up to the moment of the assassination.  I thought that Under the Dome did a better job of holding my attention throughout the novel even if it was over 1000 pages long.

The book's writing style has the same spontaneity and wit that King never fails to use to draw his readers with.  Like his previous novels, he can have numerous characters (which some readers may find confusing) but who are always colorful and well-built.  I also noticed that the characters in both Under The Dome and 11/22/63 had their share of violence and experienced some degree of physical trauma. 

The plot as usual twists and turns, and has its pleasant surprises as well.  The story shows the extensive research involved in writing it, particularly on Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian wife Marina, and about Dallas in the early 1960s.  The environment that King setup felt so real it was like you were there with Lee Harvey Oswald at the Texas School Book Depository on that fateful day in 1963. King also had creative suppositions as to how the present might have been if Kennedy had lived.

The Texas School Book Depository
showing the corner window on the 6th floor

I thought the book had a better ending than Under the Dome but I can't say I was completely satisfied.  I will not say more lest I spoil the story for you.   But on the whole, it was a rather enjoyable 800-page ride.  

3D Map of Dealey Plaza
showing the motorcade route, 
the Texas School Book Depository,
and the Grassy Knoll

Today almost fifty years later the question remains whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.  Even after the Warren Commission Report released in 1964 concluded that he did, numerous conspiracy theories say otherwise. These theories include a second shooter from the infamous Grassy Knoll.  However, based on King's extensive research he writes in the book's afterword that he would put the probability of Oswald acting alone at 98%, even at 99%.  

This Discovery Channel documentary is a convincing experiment using modern forensic technology that Oswald acted alone. It proves that the autopsy results of JFKs body and blood spatter on the car could have been made only by rifle shots from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository. I am pretty convinced that there were no other gunmen on the Grassy Knoll or anywhere else.