November 22, 1963 chronicles the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination. It begins that morning, with Jackie Kennedy in a Fort Worth hotel, about to leave for Dallas. Her airplane trip out of Dallas after the assassination forms the connecting arc for the book, which ends with Mrs. Kennedy’s return to the White House at 4 a.m. Interwoven throughout are stories of real people intimately connected with that day: a man who shares cigarettes with the First Lady outside the trauma room; a motorcycle policeman flanking the entourage; Abe Zabruder, who caught the assassination on film; the White House servants following Mrs. Kennedy’s orders to begin planning a funeral modeled on Lincoln’s; and the morticians overseeing President Kennedy’s autopsy. Adam Braver’s brilliantly constructed historical fiction explores the intersection of stories and memories, and reveals how together, they have come to represent and mythologize that fateful day.
November 22, 1963
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
With a captivating mix of fact and fiction, Braver (Mr. Lincoln's Wars) chronicles the events surrounding JFK's assassination to moving effect. The event is no stranger to the literary world, but Braver's recreation, owing to small and often previously off-camera details, remains hauntingly original. Some of these details, like the ones that open the book and dwell on Jackie's fashion preferences, present a factual backdrop against which later scenes--e.g., where Jackie refuses to remove her blood-splattered pink suit--tragically play out. Others, like the way JFK's eyes keep popping open during the autopsy, underscore the grisly reality of his death. While the accumulation of small moments gives the book its weightiness, the stories of people peripherally associated with the assassination make the book sing; through the experiences of the Texan who sold the government Kennedy's casket, the mechanic in charge of the limousine in which Kennedy was shot and numerous others, Braver reveals the tragedy of a national story that decades later can still be acutely felt. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Braver's collection is a piercing portrait of those who experienced the Kennedy assassination first-hand."— Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal
"I had thought that Don DeLillo's Libra was the last fictional word on the JFK assassination, but I was wrong. Like a sublime actor, Adam Braver inhabits these characters, especially Jacqueline Kennedy, in a way that seems brave and heartbroken and true. This is a haunting history play, of private agonies wrenched onto the public stage."
— April Bernard, author of Swan Electric
"I would never have thought there was a new way to view a moment so thoroughly dissected. Turns out there is. Quite an achievement."
— Suzanne Kleid, KQED
"November 22, 1963 is more than an intricately imagined microhistory of the primary American trauma of the late 20th century; it's also an affecting portrait of the then First Lady, simultaneously devastated and resilient as she moves from embodying her country's image of someone who controls fortune to someone who's been flattened by it."
— Jim Shepard, author of Like You'd Understand, Anyway
“This extraordinary reconstruction blends fact and imagination with a subtlety that utterly dissolves the line between public and private. It's the intimacy, the closeness we come to these (mostly) well-known protagonists, that is so shocking and moving. Adam Braver has pulled off quite a feat, realigning all our notions and expectations of historical fiction.”
— Phillip Lopate, author of Waterfront and Portrait of my Body
"Adam Braver has a wonderfully rich imagination and his grasp of historical characters and settings is both deep and natural. I would gladly read anything he writes."
— Dan Chaon, author of You Remind Me of Me and the National Book Award Finalist Among the Missing
"With a captivating mix of fact and fiction, Braver chronicles the events surrounding JFK’s assassination to moving effect. The event is no stranger to the literary world, but Braver’s recreation, owing to small and often previously off-camera details, remains hauntingly original. Some of these details, like the ones that open the book and dwell on Jackie’s fashion preferences, present a factual backdrop against which later scenes—e.g., where Jackie refuses to remove her blood-splattered pink suit—tragically play out. Others, like the way JFK’s eyes keep popping open during the autopsy, underscore the grisly reality of his death. While the accumulation of small moments gives the book its weightiness, the stories of people peripherally associated with the assassination make the book sing; through the experiences of the Texan who sold the government Kennedy’s casket, the mechanic in charge of the limousine in which Kennedy was shot and numerous others, Braver reveals the tragedy of a national story that decades later can still be acutely felt."
— Publisher's Weekly
"This terse, tense, tough novel is absolutely riveting...Every rose petal, drop of blood and splatter of brain, every movement and comment resonates with history as if trapped within a claustrophobic nightmare. Braver keeps this solemn and somber tone throughout, his brisk, often lyrical declarative sentences as direct and translucent as the characters are unable to be."—Sam Coale, The Providence Journal
“Braver is a terrific writer, an observer of the most acute details; throughout the book, he traces the subtle interactions of his characters as they collide and move apart. One of the most moving interactions here takes place between Jackie and an ambulance driver named Al Rike as they share cigarettes outside the trauma room where her husband's body lies...in this tiny glimmer of connection, whole universes of emotion are uncovered.”—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"This is fiction of course, but it has the ring of truth...And it is both painful and fascinating, like rubbernecking at an accident, to watch. With an audacity of confidence and a sure sense of fiction's ability to tell eternal truths better than history, Braver re-creates the day the world changed." —Jay Strafford, Richmond Times-Dispatch
"Beautifully written, November 22, 1963 blurs the line between novel and journalism into something more powerful than either—a visceral story of an unthinkable event that continues to touch millions, 45 years later."—Michael E. Young, The Dallas Morning News
"Adam Braver's November 22, 1963 focuses on the singular event of President Kennedy's assassination, fusing fiction and fact from eyewitnesses and other sources to make for a blazingly original, brilliantly concretized historical novelfrom the author of Mr. Lincoln's War."—ELLE
“Braver has achieved more than a skillful retelling of a particularly morbid moment in American history. With its collage-like structure and postmodern blend of fact and fiction, November 22, 1963 raises fascinating questions about how we perceive history and the ways in which personal and collective experience intersect.”
—Alexis Nelson, The Oregonian
"A literary piece that blends fact and fiction, making protagonists of real people and asking very deep questions about the history, nostalgia and loss."—Kel Munger, Sacramento News & Review
"You would think that by now every and any thing that could have been written about the murder of the president has been said a dozen times over...Yet this outstanding piece of non-fiction fiction from Adam Braver manages to do so, and thus makes the book very much worth the time and money to buy and read." —Neil Flowers, Feminist Review
"Braver’s use of multiple viewpoints, engaging personal insight, and short blocks of prose propel readers through this impressive example of historical fiction."—Library Journal
"Adam Braver has done something that might have seemed impossible not long ago—he's created a fresh look at the events of November 22, 1963...Braver has found a way to once again dip into this event that shattered a nation, and reminds us of how devastating a day it was without simply re-hashing what others have written before. It's a bold task for a writer, begin to write about something that every reader picking the ball up already thinks they know the ending to, but Braver was more than up to the task."—Dan Wickett, Emerging Writers Network
"This is historical fiction at its best: intensely researched and beautifully written."—Erika D., Book Bargain Reviews
"With a captivating mix of fact and fiction, Braver chronicles the events surrounding JFK's assassination to moving effect." —Fort Dodge Today
"One may feel drawn into the experience of various characters, while simultaneously treading above some darker, plunging depth. At other moments, there is only the residue of memory, the granite presence of fact...[Braver] writes with the seductive concision of an alternate commission, a tautness that gives authority to speculation and authenticity to the emotional valences, retrained as they are." — Ron Slate, On the Seawall
"The successes of November 22, 1963 lie in Braver’s ability to gently and respectfully reside, like a professional surgeon might, in the stomachs and minds of the people who lived through that day...Halfway through November 22, 1963, you realize the novel is somehow not about JFK at all, but about us. A lesser writer would have failed at piecing this story together in such a way that we are okay reliving that monumentally awful day, but in Braver’s hands, we come back to the present wiser versions of ourselv
"I had thought that Don DeLillo's Libra was the last fictional word on the JFK assassination, but I was wrong. Like a sublime actor, Adam Braver inhabits these characters, especially Jacqueline Kennedy, in a way that seems brave and heartbroken and true. This is a haunting history play, of private agonies wrenched onto the public stage."
— April Bernard, author of Swan Electric
"I would never have thought there was a new way to view a moment so thoroughly dissected. Turns out there is. Quite an achievement."
— Suzanne Kleid, KQED
"November 22, 1963 is more than an intricately imagined microhistory of the primary American trauma of the late 20th century; it's also an affecting portrait of the then First Lady, simultaneously devastated and resilient as she moves from embodying her country's image of someone who controls fortune to someone who's been flattened by it."
— Jim Shepard, author of Like You'd Understand, Anyway
“This extraordinary reconstruction blends fact and imagination with a subtlety that utterly dissolves the line between public and private. It's the intimacy, the closeness we come to these (mostly) well-known protagonists, that is so shocking and moving. Adam Braver has pulled off quite a feat, realigning all our notions and expectations of historical fiction.”
— Phillip Lopate, author of Waterfront and Portrait of my Body
"Adam Braver has a wonderfully rich imagination and his grasp of historical characters and settings is both deep and natural. I would gladly read anything he writes."
— Dan Chaon, author of You Remind Me of Me and the National Book Award Finalist Among the Missing
"With a captivating mix of fact and fiction, Braver chronicles the events surrounding JFK’s assassination to moving effect. The event is no stranger to the literary world, but Braver’s recreation, owing to small and often previously off-camera details, remains hauntingly original. Some of these details, like the ones that open the book and dwell on Jackie’s fashion preferences, present a factual backdrop against which later scenes—e.g., where Jackie refuses to remove her blood-splattered pink suit—tragically play out. Others, like the way JFK’s eyes keep popping open during the autopsy, underscore the grisly reality of his death. While the accumulation of small moments gives the book its weightiness, the stories of people peripherally associated with the assassination make the book sing; through the experiences of the Texan who sold the government Kennedy’s casket, the mechanic in charge of the limousine in which Kennedy was shot and numerous others, Braver reveals the tragedy of a national story that decades later can still be acutely felt."
— Publisher's Weekly
"This terse, tense, tough novel is absolutely riveting...Every rose petal, drop of blood and splatter of brain, every movement and comment resonates with history as if trapped within a claustrophobic nightmare. Braver keeps this solemn and somber tone throughout, his brisk, often lyrical declarative sentences as direct and translucent as the characters are unable to be."—Sam Coale, The Providence Journal
“Braver is a terrific writer, an observer of the most acute details; throughout the book, he traces the subtle interactions of his characters as they collide and move apart. One of the most moving interactions here takes place between Jackie and an ambulance driver named Al Rike as they share cigarettes outside the trauma room where her husband's body lies...in this tiny glimmer of connection, whole universes of emotion are uncovered.”—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"This is fiction of course, but it has the ring of truth...And it is both painful and fascinating, like rubbernecking at an accident, to watch. With an audacity of confidence and a sure sense of fiction's ability to tell eternal truths better than history, Braver re-creates the day the world changed." —Jay Strafford, Richmond Times-Dispatch
"Beautifully written, November 22, 1963 blurs the line between novel and journalism into something more powerful than either—a visceral story of an unthinkable event that continues to touch millions, 45 years later."—Michael E. Young, The Dallas Morning News
"Adam Braver's November 22, 1963 focuses on the singular event of President Kennedy's assassination, fusing fiction and fact from eyewitnesses and other sources to make for a blazingly original, brilliantly concretized historical novelfrom the author of Mr. Lincoln's War."—ELLE
“Braver has achieved more than a skillful retelling of a particularly morbid moment in American history. With its collage-like structure and postmodern blend of fact and fiction, November 22, 1963 raises fascinating questions about how we perceive history and the ways in which personal and collective experience intersect.”
—Alexis Nelson, The Oregonian
"A literary piece that blends fact and fiction, making protagonists of real people and asking very deep questions about the history, nostalgia and loss."—Kel Munger, Sacramento News & Review
"You would think that by now every and any thing that could have been written about the murder of the president has been said a dozen times over...Yet this outstanding piece of non-fiction fiction from Adam Braver manages to do so, and thus makes the book very much worth the time and money to buy and read." —Neil Flowers, Feminist Review
"Braver’s use of multiple viewpoints, engaging personal insight, and short blocks of prose propel readers through this impressive example of historical fiction."—Library Journal
"Adam Braver has done something that might have seemed impossible not long ago—he's created a fresh look at the events of November 22, 1963...Braver has found a way to once again dip into this event that shattered a nation, and reminds us of how devastating a day it was without simply re-hashing what others have written before. It's a bold task for a writer, begin to write about something that every reader picking the ball up already thinks they know the ending to, but Braver was more than up to the task."—Dan Wickett, Emerging Writers Network
"This is historical fiction at its best: intensely researched and beautifully written."—Erika D., Book Bargain Reviews
"With a captivating mix of fact and fiction, Braver chronicles the events surrounding JFK's assassination to moving effect." —Fort Dodge Today
"One may feel drawn into the experience of various characters, while simultaneously treading above some darker, plunging depth. At other moments, there is only the residue of memory, the granite presence of fact...[Braver] writes with the seductive concision of an alternate commission, a tautness that gives authority to speculation and authenticity to the emotional valences, retrained as they are." — Ron Slate, On the Seawall
"The successes of November 22, 1963 lie in Braver’s ability to gently and respectfully reside, like a professional surgeon might, in the stomachs and minds of the people who lived through that day...Halfway through November 22, 1963, you realize the novel is somehow not about JFK at all, but about us. A lesser writer would have failed at piecing this story together in such a way that we are okay reliving that monumentally awful day, but in Braver’s hands, we come back to the present wiser versions of ourselv
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More About the Author
Adam Braver is the author of five novels (MR. LINCOLN'S WARS, DIVINE SARAH, CROWS OVER THE WHEATFIELD, NOVEMBER 22, 1963, and the upcoming MISFIT). His books have been selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers program, Borders' Original Voices series, the IndieNext list, and twice for the Book Sense list, as well as having been translated into Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and French. Braver's fiction and essays have appeared in journals such as Daedalus, Ontario Review, Cimarron Review, Water-Stone Review, Harvard Review, Tin House, The Normal School, West Branch, The Pinch, and Post Road. He is on faculty and writer-in-residence at Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI. In addition to having taught for the University of New Orleans' Low Residency MFA program, he's also been a regular writer-in-residence at the New York State Summer Writers Institute.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Famous and the Not-so-Famous Collide in Grief,
By Eileen Granfors (Santa Clarita, CA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
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This review is from: November 22, 1963: A Novel (Paperback)
This book broke my heart as if I were again that 9th grader I once was, looking out the window of her algebra classroom, hearing the announcement that Kennedy was dead.The smaller details are covered here. The intense emotions are felt. An amazing, intimate look at an admirable First Lady and extraordinary grief as well as the working men and women who saw the tragedy unfold.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Historical Fiction At Its Best,
This review is from: November 22, 1963: A Novel (Paperback)
According to the Historical Novel Society, "To be deemed historical...a novel must have been written at least fifty years after the events described, or have been written by someone who was not alive at the time of those events (who therefore approaches them only by research)." Author Adam Braver may have been alive when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated: Braver was born in 1963. But he obviously does not remember the event, and he has approached it through a fascinating combination of research and fiction-crafting in his new novel.I thought I knew a lot about the assassination, which is an historical event for me, too (my parents were still a few months away from meeting each other on November 22, 1963). But Braver's book, which focuses in depth on the events of that day through the closely-drawn third-person eyes of everyone from a Dallas policeman to Abe Zapruder to Maud Shaw (Caroline and John-John's nanny) to, of course, Jackie Kennedy, opened up so much more. Most of us will never know what it was to be Air Force One as it bore the slain President's coffin back to Washington; Braver has imagined that. Most of us didn't witness the autopsy at Walter Reed; Braver has evoked it. Most of us can't imagine how Maud Shaw told six-year-old Caroline what had happened (I hadn't even realized that Jackie Kennedy had given the nanny that awful task); Braver shows us how it might have happened: "They were the only two in the room, but...Miss Shaw could barely look at Caroline, tucked firmly in bed under the canopy of rosebud chintz, forcing a confident expression, though it was clear she knew something wasn't right; and Miss Shaw's eyes were tearing while Caroline stared at her, almost demanding an explanation other than Miss Shaw taking her hand and apologizing for the tears; and Miss Shaw knew she could wait until morning (Mrs. Auchincloss told her Mrs. Kennedy said it was up to her to gauge what the children did or didn't know), but she looked at Caroline and something told her it wouldn't be fair to send the girl to sleep, to let her wake up full of promise--better for the girl to wake up as part of the grief, and that way maybe she'll mourn more purely; then Miss Shaw inhaled so deeply her gut almost burst, and on the exhalation she said that there had been an accident; then she paused, realizing the sound of hope in the word accident, and corrected herself to say, 'He's been shot, and God has taken him to Heaven because they couldn't make him better in the hospital,' and then closed her eyes, praying that when she opened them she wouldn't see Caroline crying--that this had all been a dream." This is historical fiction at its best: intensely researched (check out Braver's staggering list of acknowledgments, including the Oral History collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum [Maud Shaw's is among the transcripts Braver tells us he accessed]) and beautifully written. I recommend it highly.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
just amazing,
By Terri Eberle "my dog's name is Lincoln what d... (New Rochelle, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: November 22, 1963: A Novel (Paperback)
Original and creative, heatbreaking without being overwrought, a quick read that is hard to put down.
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lady bird, bronze casket, trauma room Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
White House, Miss Shaw, Secret Service, President Kennedy, East Room, President Johnson, Love Field, Civil War, Air Force One, Vernon O'Neal, Mary Todd Lincoln, Hotel Texas, Pam Turnure, President Lincoln, Fort Worth, Lincoln Room, Walking Spanish, Fort Myer, Arlington House, Warren Commission, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Fleetwood Lindley, New York, Captain Swindal, United States Browse Sample Pages:
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lady bird, bronze casket, trauma room Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
White House, Miss Shaw, Secret Service, President Kennedy, East Room, President Johnson, Love Field, Civil War, Air Force One, Vernon O'Neal, Mary Todd Lincoln, Hotel Texas, Pam Turnure, President Lincoln, Fort Worth, Lincoln Room, Walking Spanish, Fort Myer, Arlington House, Warren Commission, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Fleetwood Lindley, New York, Captain Swindal, United States Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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