Hearts In Atlantis

<p><p>Stephen King, whose first novel, <I>Carrie,</I> 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. <I>Hearts In Atlantis</I> 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.<P>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.<P>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.<P>In "Blind Willie" and "Why We're in Vietnam," two men...</p><h3>Billboard - Trudi Miller Rosenblum</h3><p>This thoughtful, insightful book is riveting, with King's characters fully realized and fully believable. </p>