Jackie & Me

Bayard (Courting Mr. Lincoln) offers an enchanting narrative of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier in which their marriage might not happen after all. The story is told from the perspective of Jack’s best friend, Lem Billings, who recounts the couple’s surreptitious dating in 1952 followed by their engagement and Jackie’s hesitancy to go through with the nuptials. Despite embodying “a creature bending both toward and away from matrimony,” Jackie is groomed to become a future Kennedy and to fall in line with both Jack’s political aspirations and his womanizing. Looking back from the early 1980s, Lem is regretful over not warning Jackie as much as he could about the darkness behind the Kennedy family’s legacy, as well as his inability to come to terms with his sexual identity due to concerns about Jack’s reputation. Things can also be delightfully dishy, as in a description of Bobby Kennedy’s wife, Ethel, as being “combative as a Cape buffalo, not above swiping an older sister’s boyfriend... and then, having smuggled her way into the compound, quicker than anyone to bar the gate.” Bayard suffuses the spritzy story with wit, charm, and depth. The result is tailor-made for fans of Camelot drama. (June)