Stephen King’s next book was announced today. The title will be 11/22/63 and it will be released on November 8, 2011.
The plot is described as follows:
On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas,
President Kennedy died, and the world changed.
If you had the chance to change history, would you?
Would the consequences be worth it?
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.
You can sign up for more information about the 1,000 page book HERE.
I am really excited to see what King does with this concept. Even though it has a SF idea at the core (time travel and changing history), it actually made me think of the novella Hearts in Atlantis (from the linked story collection of the same name). I think King has A LOT more to say about that era, and this is the book where he’s going to do it!