Why is this exercise in heroine worship emerging a full quarter-century after her death? Beller argues that Bessette-Kennedy’s legacy until now has been shaped by men ... Beller rebuts each charge as it comes, but with all respect to her advocacy, she seems to be litigating a case that has long since been settled out of court or, more poignantly, forgotten ... In recreating that fatal journey, Beller’s prose sparks to life.
Beller stumbled into the classic rookie mistake: She fell in love with her subject and so could never see her objectively. The result is an effusive, almost worshipful portrait of a modern-day princess, stripped of agency or nuance ... The book is a paean to a doomed goddess instead of a reflective examination of a woman thrust into a life she was unprepared for and ill-equipped to survive.
Truth is not the point. The point was her image, consumed by a public who veered wildly from adoration to enmity, and created by a media that almost always opted for the latter ... Beller, writing into a world, and an America, at war with itself, is wiser than to lean on legend. She leans instead on grace, and forgiveness.
