Jackie: a novel

"Three times that day someone pushed roses into her arms - yellow roses each time, until they reached Dallas. There, the roses were red." (November 22, 1963) And so begins Jackie, a spellbinding, deeply researched novel which goes back in time to imagine Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is telling us the first-person story of her life. At the center of this book is the love story of Jackie and Jack, beginning when Jackie is 21 and meets the charismatic Congressman at a dinner party in Georgetown. She thinks he is not her kind of adventure: "Too American. Too good-looking. Too boy." She dreams of living in France, as she did as a student. And yet: there is the intelligence, the energy, the chemistry between them. On a tip from a friend, she doesn't return his calls; Jack wins the Senate, they become engaged; Jackie quits her job at a Washington newspaper when they marry. The early years of marriage are lonely and difficult: she misses working, is confused by his pattern of creating distance after intimacy, is devastated when she sees Jack leave a party with another woman, and realizes everyone else noticed too. The old trauma resurfaces: her father's many affairs. When she loses a baby while Jack is on a yacht in France, she wakes up in the hospital to find it is Jack's brother Bobby who is sitting there, solidifying a friendship that lasts until one night Jackie picks up the phone, and faces the violent end of Robert Kennedy's life. As First Lady, Jackie's vision for bringing art, literature, elegance to the White House become inspiring to read about, as she digs around in the White House basement, unearthing forgotten portraits and furniture, and as she meets with heads of state: the famous visit to Paris with deGaulle; arranging for the Mona Lisa to be on view in the National Gallery; Cuba and the Bay of Pigs; the space program. Dallas, Onassis, being a book editor. The everlasting mourning: "if only". Always, at the center of Jackie's thoughts are Jack and their children, Caroline and John, and the love story of how, over time, love deepens between two independent people who grow closer, more interdependent, more aware of the simple moments that constitute true happiness"--