11/22/63

by Stephen King
847 pages

Jake Epping is a 35-year-old divorced English teacher.  He lives a pretty normal life in Maine--until he gets a phone call from the owner of a local hamburger joint.  Al, the diner owner, is dying of lung cancer (though he appeared to be fine yesterday) and has one last request for Jake.  He wants Jake to step through the time portal in the diner's pantry and go back to 1958 to prevent the Kennedy assassination.  Since the time portal only goes to one particular day in 1958, this means that Jake will have to give up 5 years of his life to this mission.  And as King puts it, "the past is obdurate," so Jake will have to fight against the past in order to change the future.  Much is at risk in this high stakes game--more than Jake ever realized.

I enjoyed this book.  There was this unsettling tone to the book that was just perfect for what King was trying to convey.  King deals with the consequences of time travel and changing the past in an intriguing way.  This book has a bit of everything and is sure to appeal to a wide audience.