Once Upon A Secret: My Hidden Affair with JFK by Mimi Alford, Hutchinson, $32.95
Sleeping with JFK as a naive nineteen year old probably wasn’t Mimi Alford’s best idea.
But far worse was the fact the willowy intern let the secret affair eat away at her life like a cancer for decades to come.
In 1962 the glittering Camelot of Kennedy’s White House captivated the sheltered private school girl. Mimi’s perfunctory seduction by the president quickly followed.
Exposure by a Kennedy biographer forced Alford to confront her guilty secret more than 40 years later, and eventually led to her write this fascinating memoir.
Mimi is annoyingly timid, frustratingly square (post-affair), and stubbornly guilt ridden, but despite her continuing admiration for him, it’s John Kennedy’s character that suffers the most in these long hidden reflections.
We all know about his philandering, but some of his actions when it comes to Mimi are shameful. Once
Upon A Secret reveals the sexist, cynical world lurking behind the glittering Kennedy show, but it’s the emotional fall-out suffered by Alford that most intrigues.
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