Article: Over the years, there have...

Over the years, there have been so many accounts written and published about the Kennedy family, individually and collectively, it would seem safe to say that nearly every aspect of their lives and histories has been picked apart and scrutinized. Not true, though! Best-selling author J. Randy Taraborrelli refers to his latest work, "Jackie, Ethel & Joan—the Camelot Years" as "the final frontier of Kennedy books" in that it is the only topic relating to America's royal family that has not been the subject of a book. It is not about the legendary men, John, Bobby and Ted Kennedy, and not about their powerful family, rather this is the first book about the wives.

With J. Randy Taraborrelli's latest work, the complex relationships shared between the three women who were not born Kennedy but who married into the family—Jackie Bouvier, Ethel Skakel and Joan Bennett—are explored. Throughout the years, the three of them endured intense media scrutiny, ferocious ambitions, fierce loyalties, infidelities, triumphs and tragedies—and all because they took a Kennedy brother for a husband. Like sisters, Jackie, Ethel and Joan would often reach out to one other, to comfort and console. And, like sisters, they were also known to sometimes accuse and attack.

For each of the Kennedy wives, the Camelot Years provided an entirely different experience of life lessons.

For Jackie, these were the years when her dreams became reality, when she was granted power and prestige as First Lady of the land. These would be her glory years, yet there would be a price to pay for them. She had no privacy. She was sick much of the time, worn down by physical exhaustion. Distraught by the way her husband mistreated Marilyn Monroe and—after having warned him that no good would come of his affair with her—she had to flee to Europe after Monroe's suicide just to come to terms with the senselessness of it all. Then, after JFK was murdered before her eyes, it would take years for her to cope with the trauma of his death. Cope Jackie would though, and then even go on to a fulfilling life of great style and achievement.

These were years of frustration for Ethel. While she enjoyed her role as a Kennedy wife, it vexed her that she wasn't the Kennedy wife. She and Jackie engaged in a one-sided rivalry as Ethel competed for attention and respect. However, she was also proud of her husband, Bobby, the Attorney General, and felt a great sense of anticipation that Bobby would one day be sitting in the Oval Office. Ethel's dreams were dashed when Bobby was assassinated and, unlike Jackie, she would never rebound. Instead, she was spiral into a life-changing, deep depression, the depths of which are explored in this work.

For Joan, the Camelot Years were the most confusing of her life because she found herself thrust into a world for which she was completely unprepared. She was painfully aware from the beginning that her husband, Ted, was like his brothers when it came to the notion of being faithful to their wives: he didn't believe in it. After long counseling sessions with Jackie, she tried to do what her sister-in-law had recommended: "build your own life within this Kennedy life, and focus on yourself—not on Ted." But Joan was a traditional young woman with family values at her core. She just could not overlook Ted's womanizing, the way Jackie and Ethel did their husband's. Eventually she became an alcoholic as a result of this great frustration in her life. Thanks to Jackie's influence and encouragement, she would eventually divorce Ted and embrace the Women's Movement in the process. Today, she is a happy, well-adjusted—and sober—grandmother.

This intriguing book is based on extensive research, including copious interviews with those closest to the Kennedy family; FBI documents that have just been made public; never-before-released oral histories from the JFK and LBJ Libraries; taped conversations involving the wives, themselves; and even forty years of correspondence between Jackie and her friend and mentor Lady Bird Johnson, much of what was made available for the first time specifically for this work.

The fascinating story is set against a panorama of explosive American history, as the women cope with Jack's and Bobby's affairs with Marilyn Monroe; the Cuban Missile Crisis; the tragic assassinations of both men; the plane crash during which Ted broke his back, as well as his later scandal involving the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick. Whether dealing with their husbands' infidelities, stumping for their many political campaigns, touring the world to promote their family legacy or raising their many children, the Kennedy wives did it all with grace and dignity. In the end, "Jackie, Ethel & Joan—Women of Camelot" is a story of not only heartbreak and betrayal but of redemption and great courage.

Yes, they were "the wives" — and so much more. After all these years, we still look back in wonder.

© 2000 by J. Randy Taraborrelli