On the flight to Washington—following her husband’s assassination in Dallas—former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy spoke by phone to brother-in-law Bobby Kennedy. “Life has no meaning for me anymore,” she told him. But the widow of John Fitzgerald Kennedy made a new life for herself and her children—with the stalwart help of Robert Francis Kennedy. He was their rock, her shoulder to cry on. In time he became much more, as solidly presented in the page-turner Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story.
The book is a natural for C. David Heymann, whose biographical bestsellers include RFK and Jackie tomes. (Heymann’s A Woman Named Jackie became a still-compelling miniseries.) Interviewer of scores of Kennedy associates, Heymann’s back-up materials include FBI and Secret Service reports, RFK and Jackie’s letters, and other creditable library and archive findings. The end result leaves no doubt: the RFK-Jackie relationship was no mere fling, but a deep, abiding love. For Jackie—whose marriage to the philandering JFK was largely loveless—RFK was probably the love of her life.
Yet by the time of the 1968 California presidential primary, the two were over. RFK, who was married and the father of 10, was on a path to the White House. And Jackie was on to the next absorbing chapter of her life: for hovering throughout this book is Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. Money and power. Heartbreak and love. It’s all here. Bone up for the inevitable miniseries.
