Bringing JFK to life on the page.

How did John F. Kennedy talk when he was behind closed doors? That was the problem I encountered when I wrote my latest alternate history novel, All the Way with JFK, which deals with a 1964 Presidential campaign where the President survived the assassination attempt in Dallas. Unlike Kennedy’s immediate successors, LBJ and Nixon, there is not a lot a raw material for a writer to research. Both Johnson and Nixon, whom I have used as characters in this book and a previous novel, left a very public record of how they behaved behind the doors of the Oval Office, including tape recordings of private conversations both men never thought would become public, along with lengthy memoirs and interviews where they explained and defended their often very controversial actions while in office. But John F. Kennedy died before he could tell his side of the story and while there are some taped phone conversations of JFK in the White House available on Youtube, there isn’t much else. I was forced to rely on memoirs and histories of the early 60’s, which contained accounts of meetings between the President and his advisors and with other world leaders. This presented a problem in that Kennedy books usually fall into two camps: those that idolized the man and built up the myth of Camelot and those that attempted to reduce the man and the myth to rubble. The former consisted to books by Kennedy stalwarts like Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorenson, whose accounts of their years of service to JFK could be charitably described as adoring, while the latter is best exemplified by Seymour Hersh’s The Dark Side of Camelot, a well written hatchet job. Then there is the devious and self centered fictional Kennedy of James Ellroy’s novel, American Tabloid. All books that I read in order to find my own take on the man and get some feel for how he interacted with others. What I wanted was not some secular saint played by Martin Sheen in a TV movie or the devious playboy and adulterer from the imaginations of his die hard political enemies. In all the accounts I read, I looked for consistent traits and a couple did emerge, the foremost being that JFK was cool under pressure and that when he did lose his temper, it was for a good reason and with purpose. The other thing I took away was that he was a man comfortable in his own skin and secure in his abilities, possessing a sense of history along with a skeptical mind that questioned the face value of what he was told. He could be arrogant and much too self assured at times, but that could be said of any man elected President of the United States, for even to attempt such a feat requires a big ego. I also had to keep in mind that I did not have to create a totally historically accurate Kennedy, that I was writing a piece of fiction, that my John F. Kennedy is a character in my novel, responding to events which never occurred, while doing and saying things he never did in real life; in other words, I was creating A John F. Kennedy, not THE John F. Kennedy.

In the excerpt from All the Way with JFK below, the President is enlisting the help of Colonel Martin Maddox, USMC, who serves on the White House staff, in helping stop a conspiracy by Kennedy’s political opponents to expose some of his darker secrets right before Election Day in 1964. I hope my efforts to make the 35th President of the United States live again, if only on the pages of my novel, ring true.

Excerpt:


“Colonel,” the President said, coming right to the point, “there is a conspiracy at work in this city, a conspiracy whose purpose is to destroy this administration, to undermine all the hard work we have done in the last four years. It is a conspiracy that is about to come together and succeed because it is about to get possession of evidence which could expose our dealings with certain dubious individuals who were in a position to give us aid in our efforts the rid Cuba of Castro. To the public at large these dealings will make it appear as if this administration is morally compromised; if made known, there will be lengthy investigations, Congressional hearings, which will likely be televised, grand juries impaneled and indictments issued. This could all end in trials, convictions, huge legal bills, and reputations irrevocably ruined, not to mention a jail sentence.”

Thanks to the message from Harlow, I knew all about it, some rat was selling us out, and if that happened, my future would be grim.

The President continued, “If this conspiracy does succeed, I will not be re-elected, there will be no summit with Khrushchev and a hard-won opportunity to change the direction of Cold War, and make the world a much safer place for our children will be lost for good. This cannot be allowed to happen, and we must do everything possible to make sure it does not happen. And to do that, Colonel Maddox, I will need your help. Earlier today, you assured me of your silence when it could be most critical; now I’m asking you to do whatever it will take to help me stop this conspiracy in its tracks before any damage is done. Can I count on you to do just that?”

My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
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My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH

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