'Hearts In Atlantis' is composed of five interconnected, sequential narratives set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.
In Part One, 'Low Men In Yellow Coats', eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield discovers a world of predatory malice in his own neighbourhood. He also discovers that adults are sometimes not rescuers but at the heart of the terror. In the title story, a bunch of college kids get hooked on a card game, discover the possibility of protest . . . and confront their own collective heart of darkness, where laughter is sometimes no more than the thinly disguised cry of a beast.
In 'Blind Willie' and 'Why We're In Vietnam', two men who grew up with Bobby in suburban Connecticut try to fill the emptiness of the post-Vietnam era in an America that sometimes seems as hollow - and as haunted - as their own lives.
And in 'Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling', this remarkable book's denouement, Bobby returns to his home town where one final secret, the hope of redemption, and his heart's desire may await him.
