Family values here’s something celestial about generation to pore over. “It’s just an much in my book that people didn’t Is the Kennedy family unlucky or cursed? Neither, says author the Kennedy family. They are unbelievable tale. I thought that know,” he continues. “What’s more, America’s royalty, a clan of nobody had told the whole family’s there are a lot of people under 40, James Patterson, whose new book unlocks the truth. In a revealing seductive, beautiful people story,” he explains. under 30, under 20, who don’t know whose impeccably styled We are talking on the phone. James the story at all.” interview he tells Juliet Rieden the answer is much closer to home. Ttechnicolour daily lives are shrouded Patterson is “staring at the ocean”, he He’s right. The Jack and Jackie story in myth, rumour and simultaneous tells me and working up a storm while happened a half a century ago and is deification and condemnation. The in COVID-19 lockdown in his home ripe for revisiting while the wider family most tumultuous moments in the in Palm Beach, Florida. He’s rightly is still evolving. Patterson’s prologue sets family’s life changed the course of chuffed with the book and feels it an extraordinary scene that is certainly history, while the seeming bad luck has all the makings of Netflix hit The new and, he suggests, can easily be – which began 105 years before John Crown and is already working on a imagined as a movie opener. F. Kennedy’s assassination when his screen adaptation. “It’s the American A frail old man wakes up screaming great-grandfather was felled by Crown. The Kennedys are a lot more in the middle of the night and his niece cholera, age 35, and continues to this interesting than Elizabeth [Princess, then Anna grabs the nearest cover, which she day with his grand-niece and her Queen Elizabeth II] was – in my opinion places over him. It’s Joseph (Joe) Kennedy eight-year-old son tragically losing – and as well as their story, you are also Snr, President John F. (known as Jack) their lives in a canoeing accident telling the story of that era. There’s so Kennedy’s father. “Joe has had a stroke,” only three months ago – has been explains Patterson. “He has been mythologised into a curse. convalescing at the Kennedy compound It’s no wonder then that thriller writer ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, too ill James Patterson, one of the best-selling to attend his son’s funeral.” After that authors of all time, decided to examine iconic state occasion when the whole the rise and fall of the dynasty in his world mourned, a distraught Jackie new book, The Kennedy Curse. Patterson THE Kennedy comes to see her father-in-law, mostly writes fiction and has transferred kisses him goodbye and leaves the flag those skills to this non-fiction page- that was draped on Jack’s coffin near turner which boasts the pace and Joe Snr’s bed. She wants him to have it. lustre of a gripping epic. “I have TRUTH “Joe can’t communicate beyond written it with a novelist’s tone: it’s moaning words and he’s freezing cold. just story after story after story, Finally, Anna comes in and there’s drama to it,” he opines. ABOUT is rummaging around in the Before reading the book, I bedroom and covers him thought there was nothing more with this flag ... to me it’s just to be said about the Kennedys – such a telegraphic scene,” says no stone unturned, no conspiracy Patterson. “Trapped inside theory untapped – but the his early paralysed body, he intimate detail Patterson reveals struggles to pull himself free revives the family for a new THE from the flag,” he writes. → The Kennedy family in the 1930s. Standing from left: Joseph Junior, John, Rose, Jean and Patricia. Seated from left: Robert, Edward, Joseph Senior, Eunice, Rosemary and Kathleen. KENNEDY GETTY IMAGES. GETTY CURSE JULY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly 75 Family values Sense of doom damage them. That whole thing about At the heart of Patterson’s interpretation you must be better than you From left: Joe “Although he’s of the Kennedy journey is the familiar can be, and that’s the only thing that Kennedy Snr and concept of a doomed dynasty with a matters ... That’s tough. And then, take Rose on their a god, Jack’s a dark curse that has forever hung over the risk. Do it! It’s interesting that a wedding day, 1914; its offspring. Four of Joe Snr’s nine couple of the family members seem Gloria Swanson; human being children died too soon, while daughter to have escaped it. Caroline [Jack Maeve Kennedy (in Rosemary’s life was devastated by a and Jackie’s daughter] has lived a pink) and son Gideon drowned in April; botched lobotomy. Jack and Jackie’s with foibles.” somewhat normal life. But for pretty Jackie and John. only son, John Jnr, was killed with his much all of the immediate family, ‘the fascinating of all the Kennedys, wife in a plane crash in 1999, two of Kennedy curse’ affected all of them.” the most complex, probably the Jack’s assassinated brother Robert’s smartest and also the most sons also died young and the tragedies The dream damaged. He was capable of continue to this day striking down The Kennedy dream was the vision of some pretty dark stuff.” through the far-reaching tentacles of the Joseph Kennedy Sr, whose grandfather family. “The Kennedy curse is an idea arrived on one of the so-called ‘coffin Sins of the father that endures,” Patterson concurs. But ships’. Patterson describes them as The Kennedy Curse Joe Snr’s womanising was something for him it’s not really true; at least not in “overcrowded, disease-riddled, barely by James Patterson else he famously passed on to his sons, the sense that continues to feed seaworthy sailing vessels” that and Cynthia Fagen, especially Jack. “Over time, you find newspapers headlines. transported millions of impoverished published by Penguin, out that although he’s this god, Jack’s a “One way of looking at this ‘curse’ is Irish fleeing the potato famine to is on sale now. human being, with foibles, and part of that yes, there are all these tragedies. But a hope-filled new life in the US. it is what his father passed down. The the other way – which is how I look at Thirty per cent died en route. father was this incredible womaniser it – is that Joe Kennedy Snr unwittingly Patrick Joseph Kennedy was 27 when is known to be insatiable,” writes She was a beautiful baby, but her and for some people that seemed to be put the curse on the family. He stressed he arrived in Boston and died at 35, but Patterson. He was especially obsessed development was affected. She grew to accepted in those days, for movie stars that his children and grandchildren had the Kennedys were on their way. “On a with screen siren Gloria Swanson. be a loving teenager, but early on fell far and politicians,” says Patterson. to overachieve. You had to be superior, state visit to Ireland in 1963, President “Joe is smitten ... Their intimate affair could be president. So the whole rise short of the Kennedy need for excellence. When writing the book, he was you had to push, push, push. And the Kennedy states: ‘When my great- begins one afternoon at the Hotel of JFK [meant something to me]. I “Poor Rosemary,” says Patterson with a amazed at the details he uncovered other piece in the puzzle is that he grandfather left here to become Poinciana in Palm Beach. He slyly wasn’t totally shocked when Kennedy sigh. “She was perfectly fine, just a little and it is these that bring new drama always encouraged his kids to take a cooper [a maker of beer casks] in arranges to have his friend and business was elected president, but it was a big slower than the rest of the family ... but to the Kennedy soap opera. “They are risks. ‘Go climb that tree. If you fall and East Boston, he carried nothing with associate Edward Moore take Swanson’s deal. Then I was in high school when oh no, that wasn’t acceptable.” When stunning, like JFK having Judy Garland break your arm, climb it again.’ And him except two things: a strong religious third husband, the French Marquis we got the news that President Kennedy she reaches 21, Rosemary’s moods have sing Over the Rainbow to him over the that risk-taking, it’s all through the story faith and desire for liberty. I am glad to Henri de Bailly de La Falaise, on a had been shot and died. That was become erratic. She suffers “depression phone when he was president because of Kennedys, including with sons Joe say that all of his great-grandchildren deep-sea fishing trip while Joe makes stunning. And my memory is that they punctuated by violent verbal and he loved the song. And Neil Diamond’s and Jack who both took tremendous have valued that inheritance.” a surprise visit to Swanson’s room.” then gave us some time off from school physical outburst,” he writes. Sweet Caroline being written after risks in the war. It was built into them.” Joe and Rose Kennedy created “the In her memoir Gloria recalls: “He and I was actually watching television Rose is concerned that her daughter he saw a photo of [JFK’s daughter] Joe Snr’s eldest son, Joseph Patrick century’s most historic family”, with moved so quickly his mouth was on with my parents when, live, Jack Ruby may form dangerous liaisons that could Caroline riding her pony.