Jackie: Public, Private, Secret

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 Drawing on interviews and previously unpublished material from the JFK Library, Taraborrelli (Jackie, Ethel, and Joan) documents Jackie’s reservations about marrying JFK when he was a senator from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)