Hearts in Atlantis
First edition cover
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| Author | Stephen King |
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| Cover artist | Phil Heffernan |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Horror/Suspense/Drama |
| Publisher | Scribner |
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Publication date
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September 14, 1999 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 528 |
| ISBN | |
Hearts in Atlantis (1999) is a collection of two novellas and three short stories by Stephen King, all connected to one another by recurring characters and taking place in roughly chronological order.
The stories are about the baby boomer generation, specifically King's view that this generation (to which he belongs) failed to live up to its promise and ideals. Significantly, the opening of the collection is the Peter Fonda line from the end of Easy Rider: "We blew it." All of the stories are about the 1960s and the war in Vietnam, 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 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 mother, Liz, a widow. He comes to befriend a man named Ted Brautigan who Bobby comes to find out possesses psychic abilities. Ted appears in some way connected to the Dark Tower and confesses to Bobby that he is being stalked by "low men" who work for The Crimson King. Although Bobby agrees to let Ted know when he starts seeing "lost pet" signs that indicate that the low men are near, Bobby says nothing when he eventually starts seeing them for fear of losing his friend.
One day, Bobby discovers his friend Carol has been beaten by three bullies with a baseball bat and left in a grove of trees. He takes her to his apartment, where Ted has to remove her shirt in order to set her dislocated shoulder. Liz comes home (herself having just been violently raped at a real estate seminar) and misunderstands the situation, thinking that Ted has been molesting Carol. She eventually calms down and takes Carol home. Suspecting that his mother has told the low-men of Ted's whereabouts, Bobby catches up to Ted just as they are about to take him away. Bobby is given the choice to go with Ted (wherever that may be) but decides to stay, though he despises himself for his choice.
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