Jackie. One name was all you needed. A paragon of femininity, fashion, ideal American wifeliness and motherhood, she was also fiercely independent, the first of the modern First Ladies. Then her husband was murdered, changing her world and ours.
Traumatized and exposed, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy nonetheless built a new life for herself in an America similarly haunted by upheaval. She dated and traveled ceaselessly before scandalizing the world by marrying a foreigner, living abroad, climbing pyramids, cruising the oceans, and wandering Europe braless and barefoot.
But the story of Jackie’s reinvention has been culturally erased. In Finding Jackie, author Oline Eaton pieces it back together.
Jackie’s story—treated like the national soap opera and transmitted through newspapers, magazines, images, and TV during the 1960s and 1970s—became wired into America’s emotional grid. Here, in Finding Jackie, she’s rediscovered as an adventurer, a wanderer, a woman, and an idea in whom, for over half a century, many Americans and people around the globe have deeply, fiercely wanted to believe.
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“Her name once seemed to float ‘electric on the air,’ as Andy Warhol said of Jackie. Oline Eaton captures the electricity…in this exceptional biography of a woman who dazzled, inspired, and suffered. This is the rare biography that makes the familiar seem fresh with deep research, delightful prose, and unerring insight.”
— Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author
“Eaton, who writes in a breezy style…offers discerning observations…[An] insightful portrait of an American icon.”
— Kirkus Reviews“Penetrates the mystique and unravels the myth with the best Jackie biography ever.”
— Kitty Kelley, New York Times bestselling author“Eaton…turns Jackie into super-fuel for a new generation.”
— William Kuhn, author of Reading Jackie“The best book about JKO I’ve ever read. Not Jackie the icon but Jackie the woman—in all her restless, spiky glory.”
— Elizabeth Winder, author of Pain, Parties, Work“A fresh, riveting exploration of one of the world’s most written-about women…[that] brings this fascinating figure to a new generation.”
— Kate Bolick, author of March Sisters“Oline Eaton tells the Jackie Onassis story with riveting precision and a warm, intuitive sense of how the enigmas of a celebrity’s life can entrance us…In Eaton’s responsive, empathic depiction of this historical figure, we can begin to grasp a splendor…we hadn’t yet adequately reckoned.”
— Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Jackie under My Skin“This is the rare biography that makes the familiar seem fresh with deep research, delightful prose, and unerring insight.”
— Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author" I was hoping to learn something new with this book. I did not. "
— Tampa Bay, 4/2/2024Oline Eaton is a scholar of biographical writing and a writer of creative nonfiction, whose work examines the intersections of celebrity, feelings, feminism, language, and trauma. She holds degrees from Mississippi State University, the University of Chicago, and King’s College London, and teaches first year writing as a full-time lecturer at Howard University. She lives in Washington, DC with her cats, Claude and Marcel.
Jo Anna Perrin is an audiobook narrator whose readings include Disarming the Narcissist by Wendy T. Behary, You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin, American Freak Show by Willie Geist, and many others.