PT-109: JFK’s Night of Destiny by William Doyle On-sale: 10/6/2015 ▪ 9780062346582

PT-109 has been written with historic, unprecedented cooperation of several members of the Kennedy family:

• Ambassador Caroline Kennedy provided author William Doyle with a remarkable color portrait of her father in his Navy uniform from the dawn of his wartime service in 1942. This photo has been kept private amongst Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s archives in the John F. Kennedy Library and has never-before-been published or even seen by anyone outside the Kennedy family.

• Ethel Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy's widow, has not given a substantive interview to anyone outside the Kennedy family in more than thirty-five years. She granted Doyle an in-depth interview about her memories of a historic, dramatic journey to Japan in 1962 with Robert F. Kennedy, a trip that serves as a powerful coda to the PT-109 story.

• In an interview for the book, John F. Kennedy's nephew Max Kennedy (Robert F. Kennedy’s son) reveals to Doyle, how he and his cousin John F. Kennedy, Jr. used to discuss going back to the Solomon Islands to thank the native men who rescued his father, J.F.K. However, J.F.K, Jr. died before being able to fulfill his wish, and in 2002, Max Kennedy made the journey to the South Pacific and came face-to-face with the men who saved his uncle. He shared the emotional impact of what happened next with Doyle.

• PT-109 also includes interviews with two key Secret Service agents on the Kennedy White House detail, Jerry Blaine and Clint Hill. They experienced Kennedy in action on a daily basis and reveal how PT-109 shaped Kennedy's decision-making as president.

• The book reveals the remarkable, behind-the-scenes story of how John F. Kennedy and his father Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. turned the story of the PT-109 disaster into a chariot of heroic myth that carried John F. Kennedy into the White House — and how the incident played a critical role in electing Kennedy to Congress in 1946, to the U.S. Senate in 1952, and to the presidency in 1960.

• As Kennedy's closest aide Dave Powers noted, "Without PT-109, you have no President Kennedy."