For Crime Novelist Lou Berney, a Winding Path Led to ‘November Road’

The author’s new book follows two strangers whose paths cross—a street-smart mob operator and an Oklahoma mother—after JFK’s assassination sets them both on the run

Richard Turner

Oct. 8, 2018 9:42 a.m. ET

Lou Berney’s mother used to say he was conceived on the day John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, but he is wary of the claim. “It’s plausible,” says the writer, “though the math is a stretch, and my mother always did like a good story.”

The death of the president resonated for his family, which lived 200 miles to the north in Oklahoma City....