Strangers in the Night: A Novel of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner

Strangers in the Night: A Novel of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner by Heather Webb 432 pages

 

Fans of Francis Albert Sinatra know he was a complicated man. He could be as loyal as man’s best friend and generous to a fault. When he loved you, he loved you, but when he hated you, he hated you.

 

Frank was a man who loved hard, who worked hard and who played hard. And so was one of Old Hollywood’s sex goddess’ and movie star Ava Gardner. It was as if the two were cut from the same cloth.

 

And when they met, oh my God, did fireworks fly. Combine all the above with the fact that his career was virtually over and hers was on the rise, well, it was instantaneous combustion. They were doomed from the first flame.

 

Author Webb divides the book into five sections, by date and with Frank’s song and movie titles and traces their relationships from 1946-1990, the comings, the going and all the in-betweens. Somehow, they were there for each other, chasing each other around the world. And drink? Those two could almost drink each other under the table! This story is the story of that chemistry, the need for each other that only they could sate.

 

However, always in the background was Nancy, Frank’s first wife, and his kids. Oh, how he loved those kiddos!

 

Frank was a notorious womanizer and only wanted the best things in life. Ava wanted a career, but she also wanted a quiet cottage surrounded by a family.

 

There were times I wanted to stop reading. I didn’t like to see who they were so cruel to each other. Frank came off worse than Ava did, and she, could be a real bitch. That broke my heart. But one thing I found sweet. Ava always called him Francis, unless she was pissed at him, then it was Frank. Only his mother got away with calling him Francis.

 

Strangers in the Night A Novel of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

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.