Hearts in Atlantis

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**Title** **Hearts in Atlantis**

Author	Stephen King
Cover artist	Phil Heffernan
Country	USA
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror/Suspense
Publisher	Scribner
Released	September 1999
Media type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	528
ISBN	ISBN 0-684-85351-5

Hearts in Atlantis (1999), is a fictional work by Stephen King.

This book is not quite a novel, but not quite a short story collection either. It consists of five novellas, each connected to the next by recurring characters and taking place in chronological order.

The stories are subtly about the Baby Boomer generation, specifically King's view that this generation (to which he self-consciously belongs) failed to live up to their promise and ideals. Significantly, the opening epigram of the collection is the Peter Fonda line from the end of Easy Rider: "We blew it." All of the stories are about Baby Boomers, and in all of them, the members of that generation fail profoundly, or are paying the costs of some profound failure on their part. The closing "Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling" is clearly meant as a eulogy for the promise of the Baby Boom generation, with the hint of redemption (though it should be noted that in the story, Bobby Garfield's life is a ruin, and his childhood sweetheart, Carol, has been living underground for over twenty years, with no end in sight).

Spoiler warning: In addition to plot and/or ending details about Hearts in Atlantis, such spoilers for The Dark Tower also follow.

1 Low Men in Yellow Coats
2 Hearts in Atlantis
3 Blind Willie
4 Why We're in Vietnam
5 Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling
6 Trivia
7 Editions
8 See also

[edit] Low Men in Yellow Coats

The first, and longest, part, "Low Men in Yellow Coats", takes place in 1960 and revolves around a young boy, Bobby Garfield. He lives in Harwich, Connecticut with his self-centered mother, Liz, a widow, and he really wants a bicycle. His mother claims they do not have the money for a bike, despite her constant purchases of new clothing. For his eleventh birthday, Bobby's mother gives him a birthday card containing an adult library card. During this time, Bobby doesn't realize that his mother is having a relationship with her boss. Bobby spends his time with his two best friends, John "Sully" Sullivan and Carol Gerber.

An older man named Ted Brautigan moves into an adjacent apartment on the floor above Bobby and his mother. It is obvious from the start that she doesn't like Ted, but Bobby does. Ted spends a lot of time discussing books with Bobby and gives him Lord of the Flies, which makes a huge impression on the boy. Bobby's mother claims to be worried that Ted might be sexually abusing Bobby, though in fact she feels guilty about her neglect of her son. Bobby, understanding the situation but unable to articulate it, solves the problem by keeping the two apart.

Ted speaks to Bobby as one would speak to another adult, a fact which makes a great impression on Bobby. Ted offers Bobby a small amount of money to read him the paper daily, claiming his eyes are not what they used to be. Bobby witnesses Ted "blanking out" several times, and realises that he possesses psychic abilities, which he is able to pass on to others by coming into physical contact with them. Ted places his hands on Bobby's shoulders one morning and later on that day, Bobby is able to win a three card monte game at the beach because he could read the mind of the card dealer. As the two grow closer, Ted confesses to Bobby that he is being stalked by "low men". The signs of these men include "lost pet" signs, and chalk drawings of stars and moons. Ted asks Bobby to keep an eye out for their signs and to let him know when they are near.

Bobby does begin to see the signs but doesn't say anything to Ted, not wanting to lose his new friend. One day, he finds Carol lying in a grove of trees with a severely injured arm. She tells him that two bullies, Richie O'Meara and Willie Shearman, held her down while a third, Harry Doolin, beat her badly with a baseball bat. He carries her back to his apartment house, where Ted is waiting. They go inside the Garfields' apartment, and Ted has to cut off Carol's blouse to reset her arm, which turns out to be dislocated but not broken. Just as he manages to reset her arm, Liz, also looking badly injured, enters the apartment. It turns out that her employer and colleagues invited her to a supposed real estate seminar, which was an excuse for them to try and take advantage of her, something that Bobby dreamed of and Ted was able to describe to her due to his pyschic abilities. Seeing Carol on Ted's lap, shirtless, immediately causes her to think Ted has been abusing Carol.

Eventually, Liz calms down, takes Carol home, and decides to sit in the local park to gather her thoughts. Bobby takes a long nap, and when he awakes he finds his mother asleep in her bed, and Ted long gone. Bobby looks into his mother's purse and finds a "lost pet" poster appealing for information on a dog named Brautigan. He realises that his mother has telephoned the "low men" and told them of Ted's whereabouts. Bobby eventually catches up to Ted, just as the "low men" are about to take him away. They want to take Bobby with them too, and faced with the choice of going with Ted, wherever that may be, or staying behind, Bobby chooses to stay.

The remainder of the story details, in brief, Bobby's adolescence. He beats up Harry Doolin with a baseball bat, and moves away from Harwich with his mother, and is twice put in a juvenile detention facility. When he arrives home after his second incarceraton (at this point it is 1965), he receives a letter from Carol, with another envelope that she tells him is from Ted. Bobby opens the envelope and finds it is full of red rose petals, and he knows that somewhere Ted is free of the low men once again.

Insofar as The Dark Tower Series' overall plot is concerned, it is revealed in 7th book that Ted is essential to the Crimson King's quest to break the beams that hold the Dark Tower up, in turn, holding the universe together. Roses are repeatedly mentioned in the Dark Tower novels.

This early part of the work was made into the movie Hearts in Atlantis. It does not include the references to The Dark Tower.

[edit] Hearts in Atlantis

The next part of the book, Hearts in Atlantis, takes place in 1966 and is narrated by Peter Riley, who has just started at the University of Maine. He has been a good student before, but he is drawn to the interminable card game of Hearts that is going on in the communal room in the all-male dormitory where he lives.

The story explores how the university of the 1960s was an "Atlantis", an imaginary kingdom isolated from the troubles of the world. However, as more and more of the students become addicted to playing Hearts, their grades begin to suffer...and the only way they are escaping the draft for the Vietnam War is through their student deferments. If they flunk out of college, they will be drafted and sent to the war in Southeast Asia.

Peter Riley quickly falls behind in his studies, but even though he knows he might flunk out, he is unable to stop himself. Meanwhile, he meets Carol Gerber, Bobby Garfield's friend and first love from Low Men in Yellow Coats. Peter Riley falls in love with her, and with her help tries to cure himself of the addiction to Hearts. However, he is too self-involved and therefore unaware that Carol herself has become caught up in an escapist addiction of her own—student terrorism. As Peter Riley and his friends' self-destructive addiction to Hearts continues, the Vietnam War grows closer, drawing Carol into an activist group and taking part in bloody demonstrations.

The last three stories are shorter.

[edit] Blind Willie

Blind Willie is about a Vietnam veteran's penance after the war. The main character in this story is Willie Shearman, and the story takes place over a single day. At first we see him commuting from Connecticut to New York City like any normal businessman; we then discover that he elaborately disguises himself as a blind beggar who manages to take hundreds of dollars a day in donations from passersby. We also learn that he was in combat with John Sullivan, and saved his life; and that Willie keeps a scrapbook about Carol Gerber, and has never forgotten the day that she was beaten up by Harry Doolin while he and Richie O'Meara held her down.

[edit] Why We're in Vietnam

Why We're in Vietnam describes a reunion of two veterans, one being John Sullivan, at the funeral of a third and recounts an incident that almost escalated into a My Lai Massacre.

[edit] Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling

In Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling, Bobby Garfield returns to his hometown after almost 40 years, and finds closure to his relationships with Carol Gerber and Ted Brautigan.

As an aside, we learn that, since college, Carol Gerber exploded a building, killing a janitor. Now an FBI fugitive, she has gone underground, and has been underground since the early 1970s, her life a ruin.

[edit] Trivia

In the first story (Low Men in Yellow Coats) Bobby Garfield and Ted Brautigan see the movie Village of the Damned in the summer of 1960. However, the movie was not released until December of that year.

When Peter Riley tries to call his girlfriend in the novella (Hearts in Atlantis), he tries to remember what the last four digits are--"Were they 8-1-4-6 or 8-1-6-4?"--those who are familiar with King's works will notice they add up to 19, a recurring number in his tales.

After Ted Brautigan is taken away by the Low Men, Bobby goes into the Corner Pocket bar and demands the winnings Ted had come to claim. His words are the same as Linoge's repeated request in the miniseries Storm of the Century--"Give me what I want and I will go away."

The fictional film The Regulators, which is first talked about in the book of the same name (also by King), is talked about in Low Men in Yellow Coats and Hearts in Atlantis.

In the fourth novella, (Why We're in Vietnam), Sully-John is driving home from a fellow veteran's funeral when he is stopped by a traffic jam. Before the jam disperses, he and everyone around him is besieged by a hail of objects of modern appliances, symbols of largesse and success, and random objects of suburban life. One of the falling objects is a long yellow coat--but in this story, no Low Man is inside it.

The second story makes reference to the television show The Prisoner; this show did not air until two years after the year the novel is set in. King acknowledges this in the afterword.