Society

Throughout his career, King has explored fresh ways to blend the ordinary and the supernatural. This novel imagines a time portal in a Maine diner that lets an English teacher go back to 1958 in an effort to stop Lee Harvey Oswald and — rewardingly for readers — also allows King to reflect on questions of memory, fate and free will as he richly evokes midcentury America. The past guards its secrets and the horror behind the quotidian is time itself.