by Louis Bayard is the fictionalized story of a friendship between the famous first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and a young man who stayed by her side throughout her life in the public eye. Lem Billings, an intimate friend of the Kennedy family, meets Jackie when she is a young debutante considering marriage to charismatic but elusive young congressman, Jack Kennedy. Billings acts as the couple’s go-between, lending a hand to bring them together and then sticking by each of them through their tumultuous marriage and political rise. Lem himself is a perpetual outsider, a closeted gay man in the 1960s who remains close to but never part of one of the century’s most powerful political dynasties. This is a captivating alternative perspective on a well-known story.