Former first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis once told a lover that she had three lives (“public, private, and secret”), according to this gossipy biography. Drawing on interviews and previously unpublished material from the JFK Library, Taraborrelli (Jackie, Ethel, and Joan) documents Jackie’s reservations about marrying JFK when he was a senator from Massachusetts; the background to the 1972 publication of nude photographs taken of her years earlier by a paparazzo (it was arranged in revenge by the children of her husband Aristotle Onassis); the nature of her relationship with diamond merchant Maurice Templesman, which was more about companionship than sex; and the fruitless efforts to save her life with an experimental cancer treatment. According to Taraborrelli, Jackie suffered nightmarish post-traumatic stress throughout her life after JFK’s assassination, causing her to seek out therapy, which led to self-study and self-actualization. “Her life had been filled with as much trauma as reward, all playing out before the whole world,” writes Taraborrelli. Readable and deeply researched, it’s a refreshingly complex portrait of a woman too often defined by her relationships with men. Readers who enjoyed the author’s other Kennedy biographies will not be able to put this down. (July)
