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My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath
Random House
April 2012
On Sale: April 3, 2012
Featuring: John F. Kennedy; Mimi Alford
208 pages ISBN: 1400069106 EAN: 9781400069101 Kindle: B004FGMPIK Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
In the summer of 1962, nineteen-year-old Mimi Beardsley
arrived by train in Washington, D.C., to begin an internship
in the White House press office. The Kennedy Administration
had reinvigorated the capital and the country—and Mimi was
eager to contribute. For a young woman from a privileged but
sheltered upbringing, the job was the chance of a lifetime.
Although she started as a lowly intern, Mimi made an
impression on Kennedy’s inner circle and, after just three
days at the White House, she was presented to the President
himself. Almost immediately, the two began an affair that would
continue for the next eighteen months. In an era when women in the workplace were still considered
“girls,” Mimi was literally a girl herself—naïve, innocent,
emotionally unprepared for the thrill that came when the
President’s charisma and power were turned on her
full-force. She was also unprepared for the feelings of
isolation that would follow as she fell into the double life
of a college student who was also the secret lover of the
most powerful man in the world. Then, after the President’s
tragic death in Dallas, she grieved in private, locked her
secret away, and tried to start her life anew, only to find
that her past would cast a long shadow—and ultimately
destroy her relationship with the man she married. In 2003, a Kennedy biographer mentioned “a tall, slender,
beautiful nineteen-year-old college sophomore and White
House intern, who worked in the press office” in reference
to one of the President’s affairs. The disclosure set off a
tabloid frenzy and soon exposed Mimi and the secret that she
had kept for forty-one years. Because her past had been
revealed in such a shocking, public way, she was forced, for
the first time, to examine the choices she’d made. She came
to understand that shutting down one part of her life so
completely had closed her off from so much more. No longer defined by silence or shame, Mimi Alford has
finally unburdened herself with this searingly honest
account of her life and her extremely private moments with a
very public man. Once Upon a Secret offers a new and
personal depiction of one of our most iconic leaders and a
powerful, moving story of a woman coming to terms with her
past and moving out of the shadows to reclaim the truth.
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