Along the way, they experience a bus accident and two car accidents, which Jake explains as the past trying to stop them. That's the middle of the book: him sitting around in the early 1960s, in a holding pattern, scoping out downtown Dallas and following Lee Harvey Oswald from a distance so he can convince himself that he really doesn't like this guy. As we move toward the event itself, King has a decision to make as to whether this was the case, or whether one of the many conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s death provides a better version of the truth, and it is interesting to see which road he chooses. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels. I think my goal is to make 2020 a Stephen King year and I want to get caught up with his bibliography again.

When Jake arrives at the diner, he is shocked to discover that Al has terminal lung cancer, despite appearing perfectly healthy the night before. How about the late ‘50s red and white Plymouth Fury in the parking lot of the mill, the first car Jake sees when he steps back in time? The past, we come to see, does not want to be changed, and this fact leaves us worried – if not outright frightened – of what Jake will face when he tries to change one of the world’s most defining moments.

Jake eventually realizes, however, that de Mohrenschildt is an apolitical eccentric who merely finds Oswald "amusing". All of which means that instead of King doing the thing that people tend to find intriguing when reading alternate histories--giving his answer to "what really would have happened with Vietnam and Civil Rights and all that if Kennedy hadn't been shot? There, they see a car with a bumper sticker that says Kansas City Monarchs instead of Kansas City Royals and this is supposed to be evidence that they’re in an alternate world. Jake, now George Amberson, just had to lay low and wait for 1963 to roll around and use that time to come up with a plan to stop the before mentioned Lee Harvey Oswald.

A constant suspense and wonder as the reader considers when- and how- we'll get to that fateful titular date, not to mention what will happen when we get there, and once we leave it behind. Oswald, who is vocal about his support for Communist causes, is depicted as an ill-tempered loner who acts out of a self-absorbed desire for fame. Kennedy provided a golden opportunity to every disgruntled crazy out there by deciding to ride in an open car through the hostile city of Dallas, Texas.The impulse to save the school janitor’s family from a brutal murder was all it took to tip the balance. 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. This 2011 character is walking around in the South living in segregated neighborhoods, eating at segregated lunch counters (at which he always comments that the food is both good and cheap), drinking from segregated water fountains, riding buses where he gets to sit down when others have to stand in back because of their difference in skin color--and barely notices all of the casual racism entrenched in this world. 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.