Love, Jack

Written with freelancer Johnes, von Post's sweet-voiced memoir of a youthful fling is so tasteful as to be almost apologetic. Now a nostalgic grandmother in her 60s, she met Jack Kennedy while vacationing on the French Riviera in 1953. Their relationship consisted of several secret meetings, the last in 1955, as well as ardent letters and transatlantic phone calls. JFK was a rising young senator with presidential ambitions, von Post a Swedish beauty of impeccable family. The future president told her once, ""Five years ago, I fell in love with Grace Kelly the moment I saw her. The same thing has just happened now."" Who could resist such a flattering comparison? Twice widowed since those halcyon days, von Post tells us that only the recent death of Jacqueline Kennedy freed her to tell this story. Any pleasant revelation about a public figure is good news these days, and the boyish Jack Kennedy of these pages is very much the Kennedy whose personality gave the Camelot era its golden glow. There's fodder here for Kennedy worshipers, and foes of the Kennedy myth won't find anything to dim the slain president's already sputtering star. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)