| Her style and elegance charmed the world. Her dignity and grace captured our hearts. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Jackie O. Mrs. Kennedy. Or just Jackie. As beloved First Lady, tireless patron of the arts, dedicated career woman, and devoted mother, she lived at the center of the world's stage. Yet, until recently, her early years, from childhood to young adulthood—the formative years that shaped her character—remained wrapped in private memories. In Jacqueline Bouvier, family historian and bestselling author John H. Davis opens the window on his memories of his celebrated first cousin in her youth.
Extraordinarily intimate and touching, Jacqueline Bouvier is a tale of two childhoods. Davis's mother and Jackie's father were sister and brother, and John Davis and Jacqueline, born just weeks apart, spent their summers together on their grandfather's East Hampton estate and frequently met at family holiday gatherings. Secure in the heart of privilege, they grew up in the gilded townhouses and grand ballrooms of New York City, the equestrian circles of Long Island, and the mansion society of Newport. Jackie's mother, Janet Lee, a high-strung and strong-willed young woman, had been determined to marry into Society. She did, after meeting the dashing playboy stockbroker John "Black Jack" Bouvier, whose family could trace its American roots back more than a century. Jacqueline's Grandfather Bouvier was a gentleman of the old school who kept a household where strict rules of dress and decorum were enforced. He instilled in his grandchildren a deep sense of aristocratic lineage, a characteristic that would influence Jackie's highly developed aesthetic sense and extraordinary strength of character. Ironically, Jackie's maternal grandfather, James T. Lee, was a self-made millionaire whose rise from rags to riches oddly paralleled that of her future father-in-law, Joseph P. Kennedy.
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