When We Were the Kennedys

I started it one night and finished it in the morning before getting out of in bed--When We Were the Kennedys by Monica Wood.   It's a memoir by a woman who grew up in Mexico, Maine, a rural town not far from Otisfield where I've spent so many summers.  It opens with the death of her father when she was just nine and ends with the assassination of President Kennedy six months later.  It never strays from the small community of largely Catholic, working class families whose livelihoods are tied directly or indirectly to the paper mill that dominates, pollutes but at the same time feeds the life of the town.  Its main characters are the members of her family, her childhood friends and their families, the nuns at the Catholic school she attends.  There's a large cast of characters--every one of whom is described with love and compassion and telling detail.

Tragedy occurs right at the onset--her Dad dies suddenly on his way to work one day--but the book isn't steeped in depression or ugliness.  When I was finished reading it, I felt that I had been privileged to read a private account of crucial events in this one family's history, a gift by the writer to the people who loved her and whom she loved.

The definition of the word heartfelt is "Sincere; Deeply and strongly felt".  This is a heartfelt book.

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