November Road

November 22, 1963 is a day that many will not soon forget.  That is the day that President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Tx.  Ask anyone who was old enough that day to remember where they were when they heard the news and they can tell you.  Harvey Oswald was arrested as the shooter, but before he could confirm that he acted alone and fired the fatal shot, he was gunned down by Jack Ruby.  There was an intense investigation by the Warren Commission and still some of those files have never been released to the public.  The speculation about what happened that day in Dallas has led people to create their own conspiracy theories and details for the actions that took place there between the green and the book depository.

So Lou Berney has joined the group of authors using the historic events of November 1963 to create another theory on . what could have happened in Dallas and its ramifications on the people involved.
Back in the '60s the Mob and organized crime loomed large.  Berney brings us the New Orleans mob boss, Carlos Marcello.  Could it possible that he was responsible for the assassination of a president?  Frank Guidry has been a loyal street lieutenant of the mob boss for years, but he know that if anyone person gets too much information they are expendable.

When the country hears the news reports of a shooter in the Book Depository in Dallas, Guidry connects it to a getaway car he left in a local garage.  He realizes that his time may be up.

Charlotte is feeling suffocated in her small town, her failing marriage and dead end job.  On an impulse she gathers her two daughters, Rosemary and Joan and the epileptic dog in the car after Sunday dinner and drives off from her Oklahoma town toward an aunt she vaguely remembers in California.   Leaving her alcholic husband behind, she plans to start over and live "the future she might have had".   She thinks to herself as she watches her daughters playing, "The tornado might have blown Dorothy from Kansas to Oz, but Dorothy was the one who'd had to open the front door of the farmhouse and step outside."

In an uncharacteristic move Charlotte gathers the children and heads out the door.  Her path crosses with Guidry and their interactions and relationship are the meat of this plot.  Watching each character grow and change.  The love story developing as they both are hiding some facts from each other and trying to save themselves.  Each person caught in their own personal moral dilemma.  How a chance meeting can change the course of your life.  How the one action can affect so many different lives in unknown ways.

This is an enticing story and entertaining read.  Guidry is on the run to save himself. Charlotte is heading to California to save herself. When their lives interconnect at a small run down motel in New Mexico both of their lives are taking a new unexpected path. This is a love story and a very interesting new way to imagine the Kennedy assassination.