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When Jackie won an internship to work for Vogue in New York she met congressman Jack Kennedy whom she described a "too American, too good looking". Just as moments and meetings can change the course of our lives, meeting Jack Kennedy at twenty-one years of age, changed hers and took her on a completely different path to one to which she aspired.

Jackie was keen to work for Vogue so she could have an opportunity to work at Vogue in Paris but falling for Jack Kennedy changed all her plans. As a talented writer she was snapped up and worked for a newspaper writing her own column in Washington DC.

Throughout the story there are paragraphs and pages with what could have been her thoughts with flashbacks. Some can be quite heartbreaking to read. It is as if she is if she was talking to Jack about what could and would have been had he not been assassinated, especially about their young children. John was a few days short of his third birthday when his father died. The drama of what happened as he was shot and the aftermath is all quite believable and well documented.

The novel show she was forever in the spotlight, photographed when least expected, even when swimming with her friend Carly Simon with a helicopter hovering over them at the beach.There were stories concocted about her without basis just to sell magazines or newspapers, a hazard of her life in the spotlight.

Her relationship with her father, Black Jack, as he was known and his infidelities somewhat prepared her for at times a complicated but loving marriage which she accepted was the way the Kennedy men were.The story also goes into the close relationships formed with the whole Kennedy family including Joe and  Rose. Bobby comes across as a kind man who was always there to support her whenever she needed it. Her endearing friendship with him lasted up until he was also tragically killed.

There were many tragedies in her life including losing two children, their premature son Patrick and their stillborn daughter Arabella. Although as portrayed, Jackie had a life of privilege and many happy times with Jack, her children Caroline and John, sister Lee, members of the Kennedy clan, friends and acquaintances it appears it was not a  terribly happy one.

The way in which Aristotle Onassis and his family treated her was awful. At first the relationship and marriage  was all quite wonderful, but later it became rather nasty and crue, calling her the black witch and the reason for his bad luck when some of his businesses faultered. It was well known at the time, but. fortunately she was a strong woman. When flying back to Greece with Teddy for Onassis' funeral she remarked she may have to give a story to the press, Teddy said she didn't and she could say he was grieving, she replied, but I am not, I couldn't help but think - good.

This is a story of love, that captures what could be the essence of Jackie's thoughts and feelings, all quite believable. It is an enjoyable, insightful and at times emotional reading.

Th author

Dawn Tripp is the author of four novels including the critically acclaimed bestseller Georgia, about the life of American master painter Georgia O'Keeffe, which was a finalist for the New England Book Award and winner of the Mary Lynn Kotz Award for Art in Literature. Dawn's poetry, essays and short stories have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, Conjunctions, Gay Magazine and NPR. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and lives in Massachusetts with her family. Jackie is her fifth novel.

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