The Lost Diary of M #paulwolfe @HarperCollins #marypinchotmeyer #johnfkennedy #washington #thesixties #cia @absltmom

There are times in a fictional recounting of a real person you wonder what is true and what is in the fiction category. I kept on thinking in reading this book, that even if a small portion of this fictionalized diary was true, how scary our world was. It was a time when a nuclear holocaust seemed to be our future. In school, I do remember hiding under our desks for our bomb drills (ridiculous really) and seeing on television the escalation of tensions, and always the videos captured of that mushroom cloud. We were young small kids frightened really but never really understanding the games that were being played out in front of us.

Some might consider Mary Pinchot Meyer, a socialite, a woman who was born before her time. Her free wheeling life, her ability to thrown many curves at convention, her adherence to the world of LSD and its advocates, plus her secret affair with a president, made her quite the different type of Washingtonian lady. She had been married to a CIA chief, sister in law of Washington Post”s Ben Bradlee, friend of Timothy Leary, and a feminist.

Mary always seemed to be one who went against the main stream, one who loved to throw some dirt into the faces of the elite, one who eventually was murdered a year after her presidential lover, John F. Kennedy was murdered.

This book throws quite a bit of innuendo into the forces that not only killed Kennedy, but also provided a background for the many dalliances that Kennedy had and the way in which his thoughts about the Cold War were formulated much to the chagrin of the CIA and the elite.. We are shown Washington as a den of cutthroat power hungry leaders who wanted nothing more than a nuclear age of bombs and the loss of countless lives. We saw those who urged that Castro and hence Russia be blown up without the cost of consequences to the average soul living in America. Scary times indeed and as Mary leads a group of women randomly known as Chantilly Lace, she fights for peace having Kennedy’s ear and feeling that LSD was the answer to war mongering because it enlightened people to see their inner selves, the ones that wanted inner peace.

We can look back now and still wonder about those sixties, when a young charismatic man led this country, but what can never be denied is the mystery that still to this day surrounds the details of his life and death and to a great extent Mary’s as well.

This diary is imaginative, a narrative that is mostly a myth, but what if some of it were true? How frightening to once again be reminded that for many war seems to be the only answer. Mary knew this to be true and although she led a most unconventional life, she was never afraid to buck accepted norms, flaunt mores and morals of the time, and cast the traditional aside.

This was an interesting book, a provocative story that once again made me realize that even if we think ourselves to be a witness to history, we really are totally bereft of knowing the real story.

Thank you to Paul Wolfe, Harper Publishing, and Edelweiss for a copy of this intriguing book.