Stephen King, whose first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974, the year before the last U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, is the first hugely popular writer of the TV generation. Images from that war -- and the protests against it -- had flooded America's living rooms for a decade. Hearts In Atlantis is composed of five interconnected, sequential narratives set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.
In "Low Men in Yellow Coats," eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield discovers a world of predatory malice in his own neighborhood and that adults are sometimes not rescuers but at the heart of the terror.
In the title story, a bunch of college kids get hooked on a card game, discover the possibility of protest...and confront their own collective heart of darkness, where laughter may be no more than the thinly disguised cry of the beast.
In "Blind Willie" and "Why We're in Vietnam," two men who grew up with Bobby in suburban Connecticut try to fill the emptiness of the post-Vietnam era in an America which sometimes seems as hollow and haunted as their own lives.
And in "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling," Bobby returns to his hometown where one final secret, and his heart's desire may await him.
Full of danger, suspense, and full of heart, Hearts In Atlantis takes some listeners to a place they have never been...and others to a place they have never been able to completely leave.
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“King’s memory-symphony of America during Vietnam. Page after page, a truly mature King does everything right and deserves some kind of literary rosette.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Hearts in Atlantis uses the 1960s as memory and metaphor to both decode and make mysterious American life…This is wonderful fiction.”
— Entertainment Weekly“A sharp-eyed, sometimes heartbreaking rumination on the loss of innocence.”
— Miami Herald“Hearts in Atlantis is the Great American Baby Boomer novel.”
— Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine“Deeply felt…a primer on how to write a story.”
— Esquire“You will see Stephen King in a new light. Read this moving, heartfelt tragedy and weep—weep for our lost conscience.”
— BookPageBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Stephen King has written more than sixty books, many hitting the #1 spot on the New York Times bestsellers list. He has won the World Fantasy Award, several Bram Stoker Awards, and the O. Henry Award for his story “The Man in the Black Suit.” He is the 2003 recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2007 he received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. His epic works The Dark Tower and It are the basis for major motion pictures.
William Hurt (1950-2022) was an actor of stage and film and an Earphones Award-winning narrator. His many films include A History of Violence, The Village, Body Heat, The Big Chill, Sunshine, Smoke Eyewitness, Broadcast News, and Children of a Lesser God, as well as his Academy Award-winning role in Kiss of the Spiderwoman. His stage credits include Henry V, Hamlet, Richard II, HurlyBurly, and My Life.