The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery

In this superb history, Atlantic staff writer Tiffany (Everything I Need I Get from You) profiles a cadre of women who, skeptical of the Warren Commission, pursued dogged amateur investigations of the Kennedy assassination, raising questions that continue to be salient today. Tiffany particularly focuses on three women whose long-term contributions were most influential: Oklahoma housewife Shirley Martin, a passionate Kennedy supporter; New York–based World Health Organization analyst Sylvia Meagher, who felt distrustful of the government after having been dragged before a Loyalty Board during the Red Scare; and Beverly Hills housewife Maggie Field, who became obsessed with how illogical the chain of events was that culminated in Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination. The trio, Tiffany writes, approached their research with astonishing tenacity. Martin made frequent trips to Dallas, interviewing witnesses and becoming close with Oswald’s mother—and getting surveilled by the FBI. Meagher combed through the Warren Commission’s 18,000 pages of evidence, meticulously indexing “incongruities.” Field collected and distributed evidence, including hosting an early screening of the Zapruder film and creating enlargements of a polaroid taken at “the instant of the fatal head shot.” Tiffany paints an intimate portrait of the women’s growing camaraderie, shared frustration with male fellow skeptics, and eventual discord over New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison’s shambolic conspiracy trial. It’s an extraordinary account of a relentless search for truth. (June)