This one is a rare insight into the very famous, glamourous, and wealthy family often named American royalty - the Kennedy family - from a point of view they are rarely seen.
Most often of course, people look at things from a male-centric point of view, especially when the paterfamilias is so powerful, so driven by the aspiration to rise above the slot one is relegated to when in a minority that is looked down on and not allowed in mainstream, not quite near the top. This gets all the more so when the said paterfamilias succeeds in his plans, and so spectacularly at that. It is all the more so and even only natural when this success involves someone as glamorous, as noble, as John F. Kennedy, especially when he and his twin brother of spirit carry a nation's hopes and are assassinated so young, with world's shock and tears marking their family loss as that of their nation's, even that of the world.
But the tragedies that beset the Kennedy clan did not begin with the two more famous brothers, or even with the known tragic death in war of the eldest of the brothers, the firstborn whom the hopes of the paterfamilias were pinned on to begin with, in the second world war. There were the two sisters too, of the elder of the siblings, whose stories are not as well publicised.
One of course is the very pathetic elder daughter Rosemary Kennedy, who was subjected to terrible and terribly unfair treatment - the parents had a lobotomy performed and then had her live in seclusion in Wisconsin far away from not only the limelight the clan lived in, but also very rarely visited by most of family, including her mother Rose Kennedy who didn't visit her for decades. All this, because she was "rebellious", and a hint of some escapades that the catholic mother did not approve of and the father couldn't allow the scandals obstruct his plans for careers for his sons and himself - and the young woman was reduced to a vegetable, living life of an orphan.
This book deals with the other, lesser known story of the Kennedy daughter who died young, far away from her homes, having been estranged from her family due to the parents' - especially the mother's - harsh demands of sacrifice of happiness from the young daughter who wished only to marry someone she loved.
Kathleen Kennedy, did a little better than her elder sister Rosemary, but not much - she had to fight terrible battles only because her mother saw it as a sin when Kathleen wished to marry an Englishman, never mind he was an aristocrat and well off, William Cavendish, Lord Hartington who was eventually to be Duke of Devonshire. Joe Kennedy, the eldest brother, stood up for her and with her at the wedding where others present were the Devonshire family of the groom, and in a short span of less than a year thereafter both Joe and the newly married groom died in the war. The mother of the bereaved bride had only an offer for her of a chance to redeem herself from the sin by having her marriage annulled.
Kathleen didn't give up on life and love, and was all set to marry another British aristocrat, but both died in an air crash before they could wed. A young life so very lost, and one grieves for the unnecessary losses, sadness, and more.
But what hits one more than any other factor, reading this, is how horrible the whole imposition of sin on innocence is, so enforced by institutionalisation of guilt to rule the world in form of religious strictures that have obedience to an institution as the first condition, with no freedom of thought, much less of spirit or soul.
