This pointedly echoes the theme of Lord of the Flies (the one book King says he wishes he'd written): war is the human condition. They close in on Ted and Bobby, just as a gang of older kids menace Bobby and his girlfriend, Carol. Unfortunately, Ted is being hunted by yellow-jacketed men-monsters from King's Dark Tower novels who take over the shady part of town.

King is as good as Spielberg or Steven Millhauser at depicting an enchanted kid's-eye view of the world, and his Harwich is realistically luminous to the tiniest detail: kids bashing caps with a smoke-blackened rock, a car grille 'like the sneery mouth of a chrome catfish,' a Wild Mouse carnival ride that makes kids 'simultaneously sure they were going to live forever and die immediately.'īobby's mom takes in a lodger, Ted Brautigan, who turns the boy on to great books like Lord of the Flies. But his widowed mom is impoverished, and so bitter that she barely loves him. The best is 'Low Men in Yellow Coats,' about Bobby Garfield of Harwich, Connecticut, who craves a Schwinn for his 11th birthday. William Hurt played the part of Jason Renshaw in the adaptation of the short story Battleground (from the Night Shift collection) in the television series Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King.Stephen King's collection of five stories about '60s kids reads like a novel.

Hurt reads Low Men in Yellow Coats, Why We're in Vietnam, and Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling, and King reads Hearts in Atlantis and Blind Willie. The audiobook version of the Hearts In Atlantis collection is read by both William Hurt and Stephen King. He finds Carol and a baseball glove sent to him by Ted.

Bobby returns to Harwich for Sully's funeral.

Sully attends a funeral of a fellow soldier and reflects on the events that happened in Vietnam.

He goes blind everyday and begs for money. Willie Shearman performs penance for the things he did in Vietnam and to Carol Gerber.Carol leaves school to join the movement full-time and Riley barely manages to pass despite continuing to play Hearts. Carol and Peter Riley join the peace movement. Their grades drop and the students are in danger of failing out and being drafted. A bunch of college students in Maine become addicted to the game of Hearts.Ted is taken by the low men to act as a Breaker.

Bobby's mom comes to believe that Ted is a child molester and turns Ted over to the low men. Bobby sees the lost pet posters that he is supposed to tell Ted about, but doesn't because he doesn't want to lose Ted. He befriends a boy named Bobby Garfield and his two friends, John 'Sully' Sullivan and Carol Gerber. Ted Brautigan arives in Harwich, Connecticut while on the run from the low men.The stories are set in Vietnam War-era United States. It was the 42nd book published by Stephen King, and his sixth collection of short stories. Hearts in Atlantis is a 1999 collection of short stories by Stephen King.

Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King