The following version of the book was used to create this study guide: King, Stephen. Hearts in Atlantis. Scribner, Sept. 14, 1999. Kindle.

Hearts in Atlantis, a collection of short stories by Stephen King, follows the lives of three childhood friends. The stories demonstrate the way a single savage act can impact a variety of lives. In the summer of 1960, Bill “Willie” Shearman was among a group of boys who beat Carol Gerber, a younger girl, with a baseball bat. The incident haunted Willie years later. He dedicated his life to making penance for what he had done. Meanwhile, Bobby Garfield and John “Sully-John” Sullivan, Carol’s friends, struggled to understand Carol’s rationalization for involving herself in violent anti-war protest groups.

The short story “Low Men in Yellow Coats,” details the attack on Carol. It is a story of Bobby’s coming of age as he learned the unfairness of life. Bobby found Carol after she was hurt and took her to Theodore “Ted” Brautigan, a man who had moved into the upstairs apartment in the house where Bobby lived with his mother. Brautigan fixed Carol’s dislocated shoulder. Bobby had left his ball glove, a central symbol in the stories, at the park when he found Carol. It was stolen.

The story “Hearts in Atlantis,” is narrated by Pete, a freshman in college who learns to be his own person instead of following the crowd. While in college, Pete met Carol who actively protested the Vietnam War. Carol showed Pete a picture of herself, Bobby, and Sully-John and described the way Bobby had carried her to get help after she was beaten up, even though she was bigger than Bobby. Carol explained she had been motivated to protest the war because Bobby had later ambushed the bigger boy who beat her. She wanted to show Bobby how much it had meant to her that someone had stood up for her by standing up for all of the little people being hurt by the war.

Carol also told Pete that Willie had stolen Bobby’s baseball glove. She had seen him playing with it and asked him to give it back, but he refused. Willie apologized for what he did to Carol. So, she never understood why he would not return the glove.

The story “Blind Willie” details the daily routine Willie follows to transform himself into a panhandling blind veteran so he can pay penance for what he did to Carol. The change he collects in Bobby’s baseball glove, a reminder that Bobby helped Carol while he did nothing, is donated to area churches. Ironically, even though Willie dedicates his life to doing penance for what he did to Carol, Willie considers killing the police officer who demands bribe money from Willie. Willie seems to reason he will not be guilty of the crime if he creates another identity to commit the murder.

The story “Why We’re in Vietnam,” brought Sully-John back together with Dieffenbaker, his lieutenant during the Vietnam War. Sully-John remembered how Dieffenbaker had given the command for one of his soldiers to shoot another soldier when the men began raiding and shooting up a village filled with innocent Vietnam citizens. The incident was initiated when one soldier killed an elderly mamasan. Since that time, Sully-John, who had been injured in the war, was haunted by the ghost of the mamasan.

Driving home from the funeral, Sully-John was caught in a traffic jam. While traffic was stopped, he had a hallucination about a variety of things, like appliances and reading material, falling from the sky. Among the things that fell was Bobby’s ball glove. Although the hallucination was possibly the result of a heart attack, Sully-John was found dead in his car. He was wearing Bobby’s ball glove.

In the final story “Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling,” Bobby and Carol are reunited when they both return to their hometown to attend Sully-John’s funeral. Bobby received the glove in the mail from the executor of Sully-John’s estate. Bobby’s present address, written in Ted’s handwriting, was on the glove when he received it. Bobby, who had lost his hope in life when newspapers reported Carol, his first girlfriend, was likely dead following a fire in a Los Angeles house from which war protesters were shooting guns and throwing grenades at police.

Bobby sensed Ted had used some sort of magic to get the glove to him so he would know about Sully-John’s funeral. He believed Ted had arranged for Carol to be there as well. Carol and Bobby met near the grove of trees where Bobby had found Carol after the boys beat her. Carol had changed her identity to Denise Schoonover, and she refused to talk much about her participation in the war protests except to say that she had been misled. Completing the circle, Bobby returned his ball glove to the place where he had dropped it the day Carol was hurt.