After the incident with Richard Dunning in Derry, Maine, Jake Epping (aka George Armberson) heads South. He stops off in the Tampa area of Florida and decides to try to his hand at subsititute teaching again. He manages to get a job at the local high school for a while with his fake IDs, just to keep busy and not go crazy with a lot of time to spend till 1963. Remember, this is still 1958. He has five years to wait before he can try to prevent the death of President Kennedy.
The teaching goes find, but Jake forgets himself when he places another large bet on a sports game he already knows the outcome to. The bookies love to take your money, but they hate paying out large sums to a stranger they don't know. In time, Jake decides it might be in his best interest to move on, and he takes off again just before his house is blown up.
Jake soon finds the perfect plact to live in Jodie, Texas. It's a small town with nice, simple people, who are honest and caring. This is the perfect place for him. He goes back to substitute teaching and finds quickly finds himself directing the school play that year, which proves to be a smashing success with everybody. He then finds himself teaching full time because the students love him, the faculty loves him, the adminstration loves him, and so does the town's people. More importantly, the new librarian (Sadie) loves him, and he loves her, too.
How do you tell the person you love that you're from the 2011, and that you've come back in time to save the life of President John F. Kennedy? No matter how much that other person may care for you in return, he or she is going to think you're bonkers...that you need to see a doctor for some good old mental help. Wouldn't we all? That's the situation Jake faces. His life in the past is based on lies and they gradually come back to bite him in the butt.
Because he's unable to tell the truth, he has to move on and does this with a sadness of heart that it almost makes you cry. He doesn't want to leave Jodie, Texas, or his friends there, or Sadie, who he wants to spend the rest of his life with. Instead, he eventually finds himself living in Fort Worth, Texas, across the street from Lee Harvey Oswald. The time is drawing near and soon he will have to decide whether or not to kill Oswald before he can pull the trigger.
This is where I've left off.
Though there is very little action in these two hundred pages, they move quickly. The reason for that is Stephen King's great storytelling ability. He makes you care emotionally about Jake Epping. So much so that you begin to live within his life, falling in love with Jodie, Texas and wanting to be there with him. You also find yourself falling in love with Sadie, hoping they will get together and make a life for themselves. How often does a man find the perfect place to live and the person he was meant to be with for the rest of his live? Now very often, if ever. King makes you feel the torment in Jake's heart at not be able to be honest with Sadie, and you know everything will deteriorate because she's the type of woman who now demands the truth from the man she loves.
Another thing that comes out here is how little prepared we would be to go back to the Fifties. We take so many things for granted today (like this computer and not having to use a typewriter) that we forget they hadn't been invented yet.
Stephen King captures the time period perfectly in everyway I can think of, and I lived during the Fifties. I feel at home there and in the early Sixties. I guess in some ways, I miss the simplicity of that era. Of course, we tend to forget that times were often hard then and the salaries low, and a thousand other things we don't usually think about.
What's the verdict so far on 11/22/63? This may be the best novel Stephen King has ever written in my opinion, and I've read them all, except for a few Dark Tower books. I want (no, need is a better word to use here) to find out what happens to Jake and President Kennedy. I'm like an addict who has to get his fix for the evening. So, enough writing!
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