Hearts in Atlantis is Stephen King’s look at the Baby Boomers. Starting in 1960 and ending at the dawn of the new millennium, the five stories collected here feature an interlocking cast of characters dealing with the drastic changes taking place in America over those tumultuous decades. But if you’re worried about yet another paean to the peace-and-love generation, a gee-whiz, Forest Gump-ian account of seeing The Beatles on Ed Sullivan and burning draft cards, rest assured: King has no interest in singing the praises of his generational cohort. Instead, he presents a jaundiced take on who the Boomers grew up to be, the money-obsessed, Reagan-electing sellouts who continue to hold onto power and influence with all that they’ve got. A jaded millennial or Gen Z-er could hardly scoff any louder at the Boomers than King does here.
The collection kicks off with “Low Men in Yellow Coats”, in which young Bobby Garfield deals with his overbearing single mother and tries to avoid the private school bullies tormenting him and his two best friends John “Sully John” Sullivan and Carol Gerber. When his mother takes in a senior-citizen boarder, Bobby develops a strangely close friendship with the man. Naturally, this being a Stephen King story, Ted turns out to have some supernatural abilities. Ted asks Bobby to be on the lookout for the title “Low Men” who are apparently on his trail. This is all in connection with King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower saga. Having not read read the series, I found my interest waning at times as this long novella dragged on, but it has a powerful conclusion.
The title novella comes next, and is the clear highlight of the collection. A group of freshmen students at the University of Maine becomes inexplicably obsessed with the card game Hearts, to the point that their grades plummet and their scholarships are on the point of being withdrawn. This would be disconcerting in any time period, but in 1966 getting kicked out of school means moving to the front of the line for the draft. And yet these young men keep playing cards day and night. Eventually, the war comes home for them in the form of student activists, including Carol Gerber from the first story, who go to extremes trying to live out their principles.
The final three stories are much shorter pieces, which catch up with some of the characters much later on in life. In “Blind Willie”, Bobby and Carol’s bully Willie Shearman has been dealing with an odd war injury from his time in Vietnam. He puts on a pretense of being a respectable businessman, but really spends his workdays doing some much more unusual and a tad unsavory. “Why We’re in Vietnam” follows Sully John as he deals with the psychological fallout of an atrocity he witnessed during his war service. As he drives home from a fellow vet’s funeral, a traffic jam proves extremely consequential. And, finally, “Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling” finds Bobby back in his old hometown, hoping for resolution to some childhood mysteries.
Though the whole collection is entertaining, both in whole and as their separate parts, the clear standout is the title story. Though it doesn’t feature the supernatural, King can’t help but make the never-ending card game feel sinister and strange, to tremendous effect. The other stories suffer a little in comparison.