11/22/1963: Stephen King

An English teacher in a small ton befriends AL, a man who owns a dinner that apparently has a portal in which he can travel in time. Al asks Jake to come to the dinner the next day because he has a proposition for him. When Jake shows up, Al looks years older and is dying from cancer (because he has been in the portal for years and it only shows up as 2 mins in present day. Al wants him to use the portal and go back to save JFK from being assassinated. Jake accepts and along the way affects many other's lives, he hopes for the good. He kills a father to keep him from murdering his family, then occupies man that would have had a hunting accident involving a neighbor girl, then falls in love with a librarian, Sadie, as he waits for the years to pass before he kills Lee Harvey Oswald. This part of the book is very slow and seems to go on forever as we wait for time to pass...Sadie is almost murdered by her ex-husband and gets a huge scar on her face. Jack succeeds in stopping Oswald, the secret service shoot him, but Sadie is killed in the process. Jack is obsessed with going back to the portal to go back in time to save Sadie. When he gets back to present time the world is in a nuclear haze and evilness has spiraled out of control. He meets a person who tries to protect the portal and explains to him that every time he enters the portal a time string is created and going back doesn't "reset" history. Jack realizes he can't save anyone and maybe things were supposed to happen like they did because every life he saves has to be balanced by a death. He comes back to present day and finds Sadie, who is now 80 years old and has had a good life. He dances with her and she can't help feeling she knows him, Sept 9th 1958.It was a very long story as you wait for time to pass until Jack tries to save the president. in a way King explains Deja vu. I missed something in the book because the "jump rope girls" evidently moved away, yet when he moves he waves goodbye to them- there must have been some significance there?