Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: The Untold Story (Barbara Leaming)

I've said before, I am a fan of royalty. The Kennedy family has always fit in that category in my mind. I really knew nothing about Jacqueline Kennedy though until I read this. I'm sure there are many other books that would maintain the fairy tale imagine. This isn't one of those. I enjoyed reading about her upbringing, her debutante life and coming out, her relationships and desire to be with someone who wasn't boring and predictable (until she married someone who wasn't boring and predictable, that is).

I was surprised at this book - but also touched. Trauma changes you. It talks about the trauma Jackie Kennedy experienced and how it changed her. PTSD wasn't something talked about back then - but it's clear she had it. Some people wanted her to not respond how she did - but it changed it and there was no ignoring the trauma. That seemed to be the focus of this book. It would be interesting to read other books to get another perspective on her life.

I was also sad to hear what a unfaithful husband she had. So much of married life back then in those circles seemed to be about convenience. Their marriage certainly seemed to be one of those. However, there had to be some love. She wouldn't have been as traumatized if she hadn't loved him.

Goodreads says:

Barbara Leaming's extraordinary and deeply sensitive biography is the first book to document Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' brutal, lonely and valiant thirty-one year struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that followed JFK's assassination.

Here is the woman as she has never been seen before. In heartrending detail, we witness a struggle that unfolded at times before our own eyes, but which we failed to understand.

Leaming's biography also makes clear the pattern of Jackie's life as a whole. We see how a spirited young woman's rejection of a predictable life led her to John F. Kennedy and the White House, how she sought to reconcile the conflicts of her marriage and the role she was to play, and how the trauma of her husband's murder which left her soaked in his blood and brains led her to seek a very different kind of life from the one she'd previously sought.

A life story that has been scrutinized countless times, seen here for the first time as the serious and important story that it is. A story for our times at a moment when we as a nation need more than ever to understand the impact of trauma.