‘Kick’ Kennedy grabs spotlight in ‘Debutante’
Move over, JFK, Jackie, Bobby and John F. Kennedy Jr. The charismatic Kennedy portrayed in Kerri Maher’s historical novel, “The Kennedy Debutante” (Berkley), may be the most winning member of America’s royal family.
Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy – like her brothers Joe, Jack and Robert – died tragically young. But this story ends before Kick was killed in a plane crash in France at age 28.
At 18, Kick accompanied her family to London in 1938 when her father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was named ambassador to Great Britain. As Adolf Hitler brutalizes his way through Europe, Ambassador Kennedy urges Britain to avoid war, a position that earns him derision and a reputation as anti-Semitic. Even Kick challenges her father’s non-interventionist stance.
World events aside, Kick is entranced by her life in London, making her debut before the king of England amid a swirl of cocktail parties with swell friends named Sissy, Boofie, Debo and Bertrand.
Kick’s dilemma, and the key drama of this debut novel, seems positively quaint today. She has fallen for aristocratic Billy Cavendish, the Marquess of Hartington, who is also – mother, grab your Mikimotos – a Protestant.
Author Kerri Maher.
The Kennedys and Kick are devout Catholics. Billy wants to marry and raise their children in the Anglican church. To Kick, this request puts her eternal soul in peril.
Readers seeking passion will have to be satisfied with Kick’s largely chaste longing for Billy and a few other swains. Unlike her brothers Joe and Jack, Kick is pretty prim when it comes to premarital romance. Kick and Billy date for years with their most passionate encounter being a deep soul kiss.
In matters of the opposite sex, we know Jack Kennedy, and Kick was no Jack Kennedy.
Still, Kick is headstrong and makes her way through the world, becoming a reporter for the Washington TimesHerald and later volunteering with the Red Cross to get back to London and her love.
Torn between loyalty to her family and her faith and her passion for Billy, Kick makes a choice that is true to her nature, but her happiness proves to be short-lived.
“The Kennedy Debutante” will hold particular appeal to fans of TV’s “Downton Abbey” and the mannered and manored life it depicts. Kick seems a blithe spirit as she and her pals debate the merits of war between cocktails and soirees.
Maher has written a well-paced and engaging novel that is gentler to the Kennedys than other recent novelists have been, even depicting the chilly clotheshorse matriarch Rose with a dash of sympathy. Father Joe’s extramarital dalliances are barely hinted at. Kick’s older sister Rosemary, who had intellectual disabilities, disappeared from the family – to Kick’s heartbreak – when Joe had her lobotomized to subdue Rosemary’s sexual stirrings.
Curiously, Kick overcame her religious guilt later in her short life, and took up with another Protestant – this one married. But that, my friends, is another story.