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    Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath
    Unavailable
    Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath
    Unavailable
    Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath
    Audiobook6 hours

    Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath

    Written by Mimi Alford

    Narrated by Susan Denaker

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In the summer of 1962, nineteen-year-old Mimi Beardsley arrived by train in Washington, D.C., to begin an internship in the White House press office. The Kennedy Administration had reinvigorated the capital and the country-and Mimi was eager to contribute. For a young woman from a privileged but sheltered upbringing, the job was the chance of a lifetime. Although she started as a lowly intern, Mimi made an impression on Kennedy's inner circle and, after just three days at the White House, she was presented to the President himself.

    Almost immediately, the two began an affair that would continue for the next eighteen months.

    In an era when women in the workplace were still considered "girls," Mimi was literally a girl herself-naïve, innocent, emotionally unprepared for the thrill that came when the President's charisma and power were turned on her full-force. She was also unprepared for the feelings of isolation that would follow as she fell into the double life of a college student who was also the secret lover of the most powerful man in the world. Then, after the President's tragic death in Dallas, she grieved in private, locked her secret away, and tried to start her life anew, only to find that her past would cast a long shadow-and ultimately destroy her relationship with the man she married.

    In 2003, a Kennedy biographer mentioned "a tall, slender, beautiful nineteen-year-old college sophomore and White House intern, who worked in the press office" in reference to one of the President's affairs. The disclosure set off a tabloid frenzy and soon exposed Mimi and the secret that she had kept for forty-one years. Because her past had been revealed in such a shocking, public way, she was forced, for the first time, to examine the choices she'd made. She came to understand that shutting down one part of her life so completely had closed her off from so much more.

    No longer defined by silence or shame, Mimi Alford has finally unburdened herself with this searingly honest account of her life and her extremely private moments with a very public man. Once Upon a Secret offers a new and personal depiction of one of our most iconic leaders and a powerful, moving story of a woman coming to terms with her past and moving out of the shadows to reclaim the truth.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 8, 2012
    ISBN9780307877802
    Unavailable
    Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath

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    Reviews for Once Upon a Secret

    3.5/5

    94 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      More like 3.5. I don't normally read books like this but this one interested me. The stories shared are very selective and Mimi doesn't go into great detail about her relationship with JFK only specific exchanges with a common theme are detailed. She did a good job explaining what kind of person she was before the affair and how she ended up getting into it and the after effects of it through out her life. She repeats herself quite a bit through out the book which can be annoying and towards the end of her relationship with JFK I question how much of it is true. The gifts, things he said about her to her, and most of all whether or not her descriptions of some of the most iconic & memorable moments of JFK's presidency took place like she described them (Missile Crisis & trip to Dallas). This is definitely worth reading if you are interested in JFK and that time period in America or even just in general because it is an interesting story.
    • 5/5
      Quite the book! If you are interested in the Kennedy's lives, this is a must read.
    • 5/5
      Very thorough, including the effect the affair had on her future marriages.
    • 4/5
      More like 3.5. I don't normally read books like this but this one interested me. The stories shared are very selective and Mimi doesn't go into great detail about her relationship with JFK only specific exchanges with a common theme are detailed. She did a good job explaining what kind of person she was before the affair and how she ended up getting into it and the after effects of it through out her life. She repeats herself quite a bit through out the book which can be annoying and towards the end of her relationship with JFK I question how much of it is true. The gifts, things he said about her to her, and most of all whether or not her descriptions of some of the most iconic & memorable moments of JFK's presidency took place like she described them (Missile Crisis & trip to Dallas). This is definitely worth reading if you are interested in JFK and that time period in America or even just in general because it is an interesting story.
    • 4/5
      Narrated by Susan Denaker. I admit to a bit of pink-faced chagrin over my prurient curiosity in this memoir. But while there are some titillatingly shocking moments (she lost her virginity with the President!? Wha-at!), this is in the end a sad story about how power corrupts, and not just the person in power. It has an effect far beyond its epicenter. That Mimi kept this a secret, buried her emotions for so long, and constantly managed her life around her secret, is pretty remarkable. Denaker is immediate and compelling in her reading, perfectly voicing an older woman who has no regrets but looks back with sorrow at what was and what could have been.
    • 3/5
      A mildly interesting story from the young woman's point of view. At least from the viewpoint of her older, wiser self. Although she draws life lessons from the experience and feels she has become more self-actualized than she would have without the experience, I still found it a depressingly common story of abuse of power by the men who run our country. Even worse, men whom so many idolize and admire.
    • 4/5
      I found this story riveting. I couldn't stop thinking about how this experience would be for a 19 year old. I want one of my friends to read it so I can talk to them about it. It would be an interesting read for a book club, at least it made me want to talk about it! The audio was easy to listen to - parts of it were a tad melodramatic.
    • 4/5
      Any reader who is expecting "Shades of Gray With JFK" in Mimi Alford's "tell-all" memoir will likely be disappointed. That is, unless one considers vignettes that have a revered president frolicking in a White House bathtub with an intern and rubber duckies to be exceptionally racy. With few exceptions, Alford stops short of serving up loads of bedroom-based details about her affair with John F. Kennedy. What's most fascinating about this short tome is how the author puts her White House escapades on a historic time line, allowing readers to discover what the president was doing "after hours" during such milestones as the Cuban Missile Crisis and Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech. As a contemporary history buff, I really enjoyed most of the book. True, the author seems to go easy on JFK, never really condemning his absolutely despicable behavior. And the last couple sections of the book regarding Alford's later relationships seem to go on for too long. But overall, I think it's a book worthy of reading.
    • 2/5
      The best things I have to say about this book is that a) I got it from the library & didn't waste my money on it and b) it was a short, quick read. Author Mimi Alford had an affair with John F. Kennedy while she was a teenage intern at the White House and she "Kept her secret" (well except for the seven or eight fiends that she told) until she was outed by the New York Post in 2003. Then, presumably, although she "didn't want to capitalize" on her experience, nonetheless here we are with her book bout her relationship.I'm not sure what is worse, her refusal to see how sordid & wrong the two-year relationship was, or how she still makes excuses for Kennedy's unpardonable behavior. And it is a sordid tale from the President's near rape of a 19-year-old virgin intern, to his aide Dave Powers acting as his procurer, to the President ordering the author to perform oral sex on both Powers and his younger brother, Ted, While he watched. I guess Ms. Alford needed the money for her retirement years because otherwise why write such a sad, and pathetic book.
    • 4/5
      I found it gripping - even though we've heard about all his women, I resisted believing it till I read the telling specific details of Alford's affair with him in her memoir. At its heart, though, the book felt hollow. She spent over a year in an intimate relationship with him, but what was he like? What did they talk about? How did she feel about it at the time? Maybe the absence of psychological detail is due to how long ago it happened. Maybe I just wanted more because he was such an iconic figure of my youth - and so I'm willing to give it 4 stars, despite this lack.
    • 4/5
      I'm not big into the Kennedy dynasty (although a liberal, I wasn't born until 1980, and my history books in high school always ended before JFK was assassinated, so I never really studied much about this period), but this book was recommended to me. And it is an interesting book. Mimi Alford, an intern in the White House press corps when she was nineteen years old, unabashedly details her "affair" (she is hesitant to call what passed between her and JFK by that term). While the nature of the book is a bit voyeuristic by default, Ms. Alford doesn't give the gory details. She also relates how the "affair" impacted the rest of her life, from her first marriage (which was, shall we say, "rocky") and how she lived. Revealing the secret appears to have liberated her, although it wasn't her choice to do so - the press did that for her.The book isn't the best written, but it is a memoir, and it has a ring of truth to it. JFK was a known philanderer, and the contents of the book shouldn't be that surprising to anyone (except the thing by the pool...). Altogether, an interesting memoir showing that presidents far before Bill Clinton had dalliances with their interns.
    • 3/5
      I was interested in reading this book for obvious reasons. This is a relatively short book, so it didn't take long to finish at all. Something about this book seemed odd to me, I can't quite place exactly what it was though. Some of this book was truly fascinating. Although I do have to say I think the topics in this could have just been revealed in an interview and it probably would have been better. With all of the self-refelection in this book I feel like a television interview would have been a much better format.