Fiction and Non-Fiction )

"Wayfaring Stranger" by James Lee Burke   Simon & Schuster   434 pages   $27.99

This is  Burke's latest of the 34 books he has now written.  The plot is a different direction for him in that it  introduces a new male and female equal protagonists.  I thought it omitted a lot of Burke's trademark insertions of the flora and fauna of Louisiana wherein the land and climate become characters in the cast.  Or so I thought. 

The entire last third of the book is his usual mix of dream sequences and landscapes.  But until you get there, it's a good read.

"Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis - The Untold Story" by Barbara Leaming   St. Martin's Press   358 pages   $27.99  (What?  Is $27.99 for a book the new Little Black Dress?)

The only tidbits new to me were that The Widow suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from the moment Kennedy was shot until her own death in 1994. 

Not surprisingly culturally, Christine Onassis believed that Jackie brought a curse with her -- a curse that killed her brother and her father.  Much muttering behind hands at the funerals.

This book dwells more on her friendships (intellectual) with such as Bob McNamara, Harold Macmillan and David Harlech than the frivolity of designers and decorators, the flirty, foamy froth which often marked her encounters with others. 

It was an okay read, but Kitty Kelley did the job much better.