While 50 year-old Jack Phillips, a jazz trumpet player, is driving to his gig at the Famous Door in New Orleans, fantasizing about his favorite scenario, If I had known then what I know now, he has an accident, and wakes up in the hospital, 23 years in the past; January, 1968. He remembers what happened 1968, one of the most turbulent years in modern American history.
It was a terrible year; the Korean capture of the Pueblo, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Klan killings, civil rights and anti-war riots in the streets, the Chicago riots at the Democratic convention.
What should he do? Could he actually change history for the better? Should he even try? What about the unintended consequences of his actions? How could he find someone in the government high enough to have access to the President?
Jack writes two of his predictions to his U.S. Senator, John Stennis. When Jacks second prediction comes true, Senator Stennis begins to believe his story, and relays his information to the Attorney General, because he doesn’t trust J. Edgar Hoover.
Hoover, livid that a senator has information before the FBI does, assigns two of his sociopathic special operatives to discover Stennis source. Jack has a physical confrontation with one of them, and makes the now-crippled operative a lifelong enemy, bent on revenge.
Did he actually change any of the tragic events of 1968? Were there unintended consequences of his actions?
This historical fiction is full of political intrigue, FBI corruption, the societal tumult in the streets, organized crime, and a true picture of the jazz music scene of New Orleans at the time.
