Veena’s review of The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable
Fiction published by St. Martin’s Press 29 May 18
Truth or Fiction! Did Jack Kennedy have an intense love affair complete with a love child before he met and married Jackie Bouvier? This book, which paints a very different picture of the Kennedy family and Jack Kennedy himself, is an expose on the love affair and love child. The Kennedys are painted as a dysfunctional family with complicated undercurrents between the various members.
Alicia has escaped war-torn Poland for asylum in the USA. Thanks to a fellow Polish émigré, she finds herself in Hyannisport, working at the local movie theater with a summer job at the Kennedy compound as a maid. When her love affair with Jack takes center stage, her Polish friend and fellow maid tries to get her dismissed from the household and removed from Hyannisport. Fortunately for Alicia, the theater manager where she works comes to her rescue.
Jack is Alicia’s obsession and she apparently is his. As Jack’s political career takes off under his father’s tutelage, Jack finds every opportunity to spend time with Alicia. At one stage he even gets engaged to her, but when his family find out that she’s Jewish and not Catholic as they were lead to believe, they force Alicia into breaking off her engagement and finding her way to Hollywood.
Between Alicia’s arrival in Hollywood and working as a pseudo escort, Jack’s continued pursuit of her, even as his political career takes off and he starts to have aspirations for the presidency and the Kennedy family – particularly the patriarch, who is a like a spider in the center weaving his web and forcing the outcomes that he desires – I lost interest in the story and gave up trying to continue.
Did Alicia have Jack’s baby? What caused them to separate? Clearly, the Kennedy political machine under Jack’s father had a hand in their fate! Others may enjoy this story to conclusion, but it wasn’t for me.
Grade: DNF
Summary:
A New York Times bestselling author imagines the affair between John F. Kennedy and Alicia Corning Clark – and the child they may have had.
Based on a real story – in 1950, a young, beautiful Polish refugee arrives in Hyannisport, Massachusetts to work as a maid for one of the wealthiest families in America. Alicia is at once dazzled by the large and charismatic family, in particular the oldest son, a rising politician named Jack.
Alicia and Jack are soon engaged, but his domineering father forbids the marriage. And so, Alicia trades Hyannisport for Hollywood, and eventually Rome. She dates famous actors and athletes and royalty, including Gary Cooper, Kirk Douglas, and Katharine Hepburn, all the while staying close with Jack. A decade after they meet, on the eve of Jack’s inauguration as the thirty-fifth President of the United States, the two must confront what they mean to each other.The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable is based on the fascinating real life of Alicia Corning Clark, a woman who J. Edgar Hoover insisted was paid by the Kennedys to keep quiet, not only about her romance with Jack Kennedy, but also a baby they may have had together.
No excerpt available.
