2011 novel by Stephen King
11/22/63 is a novel by American author Stephen King about a time traveler who attempts to prevent the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, which occurred on November 22, 1963 (the novel's titular date). It is the 60th book published by Stephen King, his 49th novel and the 42nd under his own name. The novel required considerable research to accurately portray the late 1950s and early 1960s. King commented on the amount of research it required, saying "I've never tried to write anything like this before. It was really strange at first, like breaking in a new pair of shoes."
The novel was announced on King's official site on March 2, 2011. A short excerpt was released online on June 1, 2011, and another excerpt was published in the October 28, 2011, issue of "Entertainment Weekly". The novel was published on November 8, 2011, and quickly became a number-one bestseller. It stayed on "The New York Times" Best Seller list for 16 weeks. "11/22/63" won the 2011 "Los Angeles Times" Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller and the 2012 International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel, and was nominated for the 2012 British Fantasy Award for Best Novel and the 2012 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. The novel was also selected by "The New York Times" as one of its 10 best books of 2011. The novel was adapted into a Hulu mini-series in 2016, "11.22.63".
Background.
According to King, the idea for the novel first came to him in 1971, before the release of his first novel, "Carrie" (1974). He was going to title it "Split Track". However, he felt that a historical novel required more research than he was willing to do at the time and greater literary talent than he possessed. Like his novel "Under the Dome" (2009), he abandoned the project, returning to the story later in life.
King first talked publicly about the idea in "Marvel Spotlight" magazine issue "The Dark Tower" (January 27, 2007), prior to the beginning of the ongoing comic book adaptation of his "Dark Tower" series. In a piece in the magazine titled "An Open Letter from Stephen King", he writes about possible original ideas for comics:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;I'd like to tell a time-travel story where this guy finds a diner that connects to 1958... you always go back to the same day. So one day he goes back and just stays. Leaves his 2007 life behind. His goal? To get up to November 22, 1963, and stop Lee Harvey Oswald. He does, and he's convinced he's just FIXED THE WORLD. But when he goes back to '07, the world's a nuclear slag-heap. Not good to fool with Father Time. So then he has to go back again and stop himself... only he's taken on a fatal dose of radiation, so it's a race against time.
Commenting on the book as historical fiction, King said: "This might be a book where we really have a chance to get an audience who's not my ordinary audience. Instead of people who read horror stories, people who read "The Help" or "People of the Book" might like this book."
King and longtime researcher Russ Dorr prepared for the novel by reading many historical documents and newspaper archives from the period, looking at clothing and appliance ads, sports scores, and television listings. The book contains detailed minutiae such as the 1958 price of a pint of root beer (10 cents) or a haircut (40 cents). King and Dorr traveled to Dallas, where they visited Oswald's apartment building (now a private residence), found the home of Gen. Edwin Walker (a target of an assassination attempt by Oswald), and had a private tour of the Sixth Floor Museum in the Texas School Book Depository. King studied various conspiracy theories, ultimately coming to the conclusion that Oswald acted alone. King met with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, an assistant to Lyndon B. Johnson and the author of books about several presidents, and used some of her ideas of worst-case political scenarios that might occur in the absence of Kennedy's assassination.
Publication.
The trade hardcover edition features a dust jacket that is a faux newspaper front page, with the front of the jacket featuring an article recounting the real historical event of Kennedy's assassination, and the back featuring an alternative history article speaking of the event as just a failed assassination attempt that Kennedy survives unscathed. The newspaper headlines were written by King himself. In addition to the regular trade edition, Scribner produced a signed limited edition of 1,000 copies, 850 of which were made available for sale beginning on November 8, 2011 (). This edition features a different dust jacket, exclusive chapter-heading photos, and a DVD. Due to a website problem on November 8, most copies remained unsold and a drawing ran from November 10 to 11 to sell the remaining copies. There was also a limited edition of 700 published in the United Kingdom. It was a slipcased hardcover with deluxe binding, photographic endpapers, and a facsimile signature, and included a DVD.
Plot.
Jake Epping is a recently divorced high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, earning extra money teaching a GED class. Epping gives an assignment to his GED students, asking them to write about a day that changed their lives. One of the students, a learning disabled janitor named Harry Dunning, submits an assignment describing the night his alcoholic father murdered his mother and siblings with a hammer; the story emotionally affects Jake, and the two become friends after Harry earns his GED.
Two years after reading the essay, Jake is summoned by his friend Al Templeton to the diner Al owns. When Jake arrives at the diner, he is shocked to discover that Al has terminal lung cancer, despite appearing perfectly healthy the night before. Al instructs Jake to step into the back of the diner's pantry, where Jake finds a time slip leading to Lisbon Falls as it existed on September 9, 1958. After exploring the town, Jake returns to 2011 and learns that the portal leads to the same moment of the same day every time it is used, and that a visitor will always return to the present two minutes after they had left.
Al reveals that he had used the time slip to concoct a plan to prevent John F. Kennedy's assassination, hoping that doing so would stop the Vietnam War and change history for the better. He spent four years in the past after entering the portal the previous night, traveling to Dallas, Texas, to track Lee Harvey Oswald, plotting to kill the would-be assassin during his attempted murder of General Edwin Walker. However, due to his illness, Al is unable to continue his mission. He recruits a reluctant Jake to complete it.
As an experiment, Jake travels back to 1958 to save Harry's family, who will be killed by his father on Halloween night. Using the alias "George Amberson", Jake buys a car and travels to Harry's hometown of Derry, Maine, immediately disliking the place. Jake is able to find Harry's father, Frank Dunning, and track his movements. After saving all but one of Harry's siblings from Frank's brutal assault, Jake returns to 2011 hopeful that he improved Harry's life, only to learn that he indirectly caused Harry to die in Vietnam. Soon afterward, Al commits suicide.
Resigned, Jake re-enters the portal, travels back to Derry, and kills Frank while he is visiting a cemetery. After resolving one of Al's other missions—preventing a hunter from accidentally shooting a young girl—Jake makes his way, first to Florida, then to Texas to wait for Oswald's arrival. He eventually settles in Jodie, a town on the outskirts of Dallas, where he becomes a full-time English teacher at a local consolidated school. At the wedding reception of the high school's librarian Mimi Corcoran (who is retiring), Jake meets Sadie Dunhill, the new librarian. After Mimi's death, Jake and Sadie are tasked with organizing a memorial assembly, bringing them closer together. Over time, Sadie and Jake fall in love and begin a relationship. Sadie reveals that her ex-husband, John Clayton, had many odd habits owing to his obsessive compulsive disorder and was emotionally distant.
Meanwhile, Jake surveils Oswald and his family, renting properties close to them and installing microphones in their apartment. He briefly interacts with Marina Oswald. In the notebook Al gave him, Al states that George de Mohrenschildt may have been involved in the attempted assassination of Edwin Walker. Jake plans to stalk Oswald on the date of the attempted assassination to see if de Mohrenschildt was present, but Clayton finds Sadie and holds her hostage. Jake arrives at Sadie's house with Deke Simmons, the former principal of the high school and Mimi's widower, rescuing Sadie. Jake stays with Sadie in the hospital as she recuperates and as a result is not able to watch Oswald as he attempts to kill Walker.
As the date of the assassination approaches, Jake gambles on a boxing match and wins, gaining the attention of local businessman Akiva Roth, who visits Jake's house in Dallas with two associates and has them beat Jake. As a result, Jake loses his memories of Oswald and spends weeks in the hospital and in a rehabilitation center. After remembering Al's notebook, Jake retrieves it and forms a plan to kill Oswald inside the Texas School Book Depository on the day of the assassination. He writes a letter to Sadie asking her not to try to find him for her safety. Sadie nevertheless finds him in Fort Worth and the pair attempt to make it to Dallas in time. They arrive at the Depository in time for Jake to successfully prevent Oswald from shooting Kennedy. Secret Service agents shoot Oswald dead, but not before Oswald shoots and kills Sadie.
Jake is regarded as a hero and is thanked by both Kennedy and his wife. Jake returns to Lisbon Falls and is met by "The Yellow Card Man" (so called because he wears a yellow card in his hat), who tells him to go back to 2011 and see what he has done.
In 2011, Jake discovers that Earth has become a wasteland after a nuclear war in 1974, and that natural disasters occur regularly. Through a conversation with Harry, alive in this timeline, he finds out that many historical tragedies such as the Jonestown incident happened with an increased death toll, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was never passed. The planet is on the verge of collapse, and many countries are involved in various recurring wars. Jake goes back to the past and is told by the Yellow Card Man that every trip causes another "string", an alternate reality with a different past and different future. These strings overlap and eventually can cause reality to fall apart, as evidenced by what Jake saw when he returned to 2011. The Yellow Card Man says that he is part of a group of people who monitor time slips, and who are often driven to insanity because of the many realities that are created when someone travels to the past. He instructs Jake to return to 2011, allowing the future to return to normal. Jake instead stays in 1958 for some time, contemplating whether to warn Sadie about John Clayton or not.
Jake eventually returns to the future, finding that it has returned to normal. He moves out of Lisbon Falls and finds that Sadie is being celebrated as a "Citizen of the Century" in Jodie, and he goes to the party being held. Sadie, now in her eighties, spent the time between 1958 and 2011 doing charity work and served terms as mayor and in the Texas legislature, and is beloved by the people of Jodie. Jake and Sadie share a dance as Jake reminisces on the life they shared.
Alternate ending.
Stephen King published an alternate ending on his official website on January 24, 2012, in which Jake finds a November 22, 2013, news article where Sadie has turned 80. She had married a man named Trevor Anderson, with whom she had five children, eleven grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. Before release, this ending was scrapped and swapped for the published version at the suggestion of King's son, writer Joe Hill.
Characters.
Historical.
Other historical characters depicted in the book include President John