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First Published:
Jun 2022, 352 pages
Paperback:
Jun 2023, 368 pages
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Master storyteller Louis Bayard delivers a surprising portrait of a young Jackie Kennedy as we've never seen her before.
In 1951, former debutante Jacqueline Bouvier is hard at work as the Inquiring Camera Girl for a Washington newspaper. Her mission in life is "not to be a housewife," but when she meets the charismatic congressman Jack Kennedy at a Georgetown party, her resolution begins to falter. Soon the two are flirting over secret phone calls, cocktails, and dinner dates, and as Jackie is drawn deeper into the Kennedy orbit, and as Jack himself grows increasingly elusive and absent, she begins to question what life at his side would mean. For answers, she turns to his best friend and confidant, Lem Billings, a closeted gay man who has made the Kennedy family his own, and who has been instructed by them to seal the deal with Jack's new girl. But as he gets to know her, a deep and touching friendship emerges, leaving him with painfully divided alliances and a troubling dilemma: Is this the marriage she deserves?
Narrated by an older Lem as he looks back at his own role in a complicated alliance, this is a courtship story full of longing and of suspense, of what-ifs and possible wrong turns. It is a surprising look at Jackie before she was that Jackie. And in best-selling author Louis Bayard's witty and deeply empathetic telling, Jackie & Me is a page-turning story of friendship, love, sacrifice, and betrayal— and a fresh take on two iconic American figures.
Excerpt
Jackie & Me
It's the weekend before St. Patrick's Day, 1952, and there's still a late-winter nip in the Virginia air, but Jack always keeps the top down because, by age thirty-four, he knows how dashing his hair looks in high wind. We're due at Bobby and Ethel's that night, but Jack instead cuts across Chain Bridge. I shoot him a look, and he says—imagine the offhandedness—that we have an additional passenger.
"Oh, yes?" I say. "And who should that be?"
"A Miss Bouvier."
Mind you, there's nothing in that honorific Miss to signify a lady of distinction. He refers to virtually all his girls that way. She might be a cashier at the Montelle Pharmacy or Finland's deputy chief of mission, and you won't know until you've pulled up in front of her apartment building and seen her tottering through the front gate, a blonde in a crew-neck cardigan or a brunette in a bullet bra, and it's always the latter who raises her hand for you to kiss and the former who comes at you ...
Bayard's depiction of Jack and Jackie's relationship rang very true to me and gave a sense of depth and humanity to their iconic images. Highly recommend (Elizabeth VF). There are many places in the book where the reader will learn new facts about Jackie Bouvier and her relationship with Lem Billings, and the doors he opened for her. The cast of characters is superb and Bayard has caught the subtle nuances of mid-century life (Lloyde N). The author did a fantastic job developing their individual worlds, their relationships and the planned out paths they took. It made me appreciate the very lonely life Jackie had at that time and the very special friendship she and Lem had (Sharon J)...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse First Impression Reviewers).
Angie Kim, author of Miracle Creek
I absolutely adore this novel! It's a testament to Louis Bayard's remarkable gifts as storyteller how suspenseful it is, given that we already know this story...or do we? Full of Bayard's trademark charm and wit, with prose that sings and a perfect voice, Jackie & Me delighted me from beginning to end. Julia Claiborne Johnson, author of Be Frank With Me and Better Luck Next Time
We all dream of novels as good as this one: Fascinating, funny, gorgeous, heartbreaking. In my next life I want to be Louis Bayard.
Jackie & Me, Louis Bayard's historical novel about the early days of courtship between John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy (née Bouvier) is narrated by JFK's real-life best friend, Lem Billings. The two men met as boys while attending prep school at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut.
Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a product of two prominent families who came to America on the Mayflower. On his mother's side, he was a descendant of John LeMoyne, abolitionist and founder of LeMoyne-Owen College, a historically Black college in Memphis, Tennessee.
Lem and John F. Kennedy became roommates and friends at Choate when the former was 17 and the latter 16. John was often ill as a young ...
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