And They Called It Camelot

 

And They Called It Camelot by Stephanie Marie Thorton   480 pages

 

For fans of Melanie Benjamin’s “The Aviator’s Wife,” Paula McLain’s “The Paris Wife,” and for those interested in President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

 

It dawned on me while I was reading this that there are generations of Americans who may not know who the Kennedys were and the magic spell they had cast over the nation. They were our version of the royal family. They were a new generation, way back in the early 1960s, who were leading the United States. “A new generation of Americans, born in this century.”

 

Framed by deaths of her husband, JFK, her brother-in-law, RFK , and her second husband, Aristole Onassis, this novel focuses on Jackie, her losses (and there were many), her gains and the struggles she had to carve  a place of her own in the world.

 

Told for in first person, from Jackie’s point of view, the story opens in 1952. I felt a little cheated when Jackie referred to her fiancé, John. It turned out that it was John Husted. But this is also the time that she meets Congressman John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts. And this is the story of Jackie, the woman she was, the wife and mother she became, the woman grew to become.  Perhaps most importantly, this is the story of one of the greatest love stories of the 20^th century.

 

As I was reading, I felt like I was a fly who had perched on her shoulder and stayed there for more than 25 years. I felt her happiness and her sorrows.  I also learned a lot about the woman who was the 35^th First Lady and why the world fell in love with this shy and intelligent who would rather stay home than go to a State Dinner.

 

I grieved over her miscarriage, the stillborn birth of a daughter, the death of an infant son, and that bloody day in Dallas so many years ago that is seared into many American’s minds and defined a generation. (One of the things on my list to ask God, should I be granted a seat in heaven, is who “really” killed JFK?)

 

I felt the wind in her hair as she rode her beloved horses. I felt how she grew into a fierce lioness who did what she had to do to protect her children, even if it included marry a Greek jerk with more money than God.

 

I loved this novel. I loved how it went behind the scenes at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, the calamity of the Bay of Pigs, the urgency of the Cuban Missle Crisis and her devastation at the loss of her beloved Jack.

 

I would have like it to go on until her death, but the last two sentences sum it up best: “With Ari’s death, I was no longer Jackie Kennedy, or Jackie O. I was just Jackie.”

 

I HIGHLY recommend  “And They Called It Camelot.” It receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.