11/22/63: A Novel

Stephen King

Nov 2011 · Simon and Schuster · Narrated by Craig Wasson

About this audiobook

One of the Ten Best Books of The New York Times Book Review
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963, THREE SHOTS RANG OUT IN DALLAS, PRESIDENT KENNEDY DIED, AND THE WORLD CHANGED. WHAT IF YOU COULD CHANGE IT BACK?

In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King—who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer—takes readers on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.

It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away—a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than fifty years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life—like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963—turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore. Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.

Ratings and reviews

it's a good book, but the narrator is not great. don't get me wrong, he is not bad, but his voice is nasal. it sometimes sounds like he has a stuffed up nose. not all the time, just certain words or sentences. it's still worth checking out. it's a good story, long, intricate, and interesting. I'd just much rather have it read by Frank Muller or George Guidall. I'm not sure if Muller was still alive when this Book came out. Frank Muller is the number 1 narrator. this narrator is pretty amateurish at times. he does an all right job, but when he tries to put more emotion in the words, he sometimes goes overboard and sounds like he is chewing on the scenery. the worst part is the beginning when he is reading the essay by the brain-damaged student. he makes the character sound like a middle schooler making fun of a mentally disabled person. it's embarrassing and insulting at the same time. it's really not cool. he sounds like he's making fun of a disabled person, it's that badly done.

This novel was wonderful except that it went a little bit too long. If some scenarios had been left out, this story could have been just as effective.

Wow, what an amazing book. A definite love letter to the Democrat party, shame, but an excellent listen none the less. The characters were great and you connect and want to see the best for them. It takes a true story and twists it into fantasy which gript me. It takes hold and I couldn't stop listening. Highly addicting and highly entertaining. This book had me wondering about invisible stairs and what changes I would make to the past... if only. Caution to the wind! This is pre-Trump era, so there is no mentioned of him, unlike his recent releases, thank God! SK, stick to this type of storytelling and you'll have fans on both sides of the isle. Forget the TDS.

About the author

Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes the short story collection You Like It Darker, Holly (a New York Times Notable Book of 2023), Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.