The Lost Diary of M

December 15, 2019
A fictionalized diary of Mary Pinchot Meyer, the woman rumored to have stolen the heart of John F. Kennedy during his presidency. Born into a wealthy Pennsylvania family, Mary Pinchot first met JFK when she was a teenager in boarding school. Years later, after marrying CIA agent Cord Meyer, Mary settled in Georgetown, where she and her husband regularly attended parties alongside several political heavyweights. It was in Georgetown that Mary reconnected with then-senator Kennedy. Following her divorce from Cord a few years later, Mary is thought to have developed an intimate emotional and physical relationship with JFK, and the book imagines this relationship as it may have evolved after Kennedy became president of the United States. Wolfe (Postcards From Atlantic City, 2015, etc.) uses Mary's fictional journal to portray this elusive woman as a politically informed, bohemian artist whose forward-thinking attitudes may have played a role in Kennedy's political decisions, especially during the Cuban missile crisis. The author's Mary Pinchot Meyer is convinced that Kennedy loves her more deeply than he has any other woman, including his wife. The closer Mary becomes with the president, however, the more she fears for her own safety. The author deftly simulates a complicated woman's diary, creating a document that feels entirely authentic--which includes assuming a certain level of knowledge on the reader's part about the primary players in several federal agencies of the early 1960s. True to its nature as a diary, the prose is often choppy and desultory, which results in a narrative that is sometimes difficult to follow. Even so, the author includes interesting political and historical details in the entries, shedding light on a woman with a front seat to American history. A complicated and intimate story of JFK's secret life, best suited for American history buffs.

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February 17, 2020
Wolfe debuts with this captivating fictionalization of the life and death of Mary Pinchot Meyer, a mistress to JFK, ex-wife to a high-ranking member of the CIA, and the victim of one of Washington, D.C.’s most notorious unsolved murder. Wolfe tells the story of this headstrong artist and socialite through diary entries: Mary attends dinner parties thrown by power brokers as Cold War politics and paranoia loom over government administrators, and documents her affair with the president, the culmination of decades of desire between the two. Mary is at her most unguarded when with JFK, whether in moments of intimacy or engaged in tense political debate. After Kennedy’s assassination, Mary’s refusal to accept the official explanation provokes the same powerful forces she wined and dined with to shadow her, leading to a dramatic ending. While Wolfe’s workaday prose does not always meet the enthralling facts of Mary’s life, fans of political dramas will enjoy this new take on a contentious time in the nation’s history.

Starred review from December 1, 2019
John F. Kennedy's extramarital dalliances while president have long been part of his legacy, but perhaps no affair was more important to him, or more furtive, than that with Mary Meyer, a flamboyant divorc�e, ex-wife of a CIA operative, and sister-in-law of the legendary Ben Bradlee. Not long after JFK's assassination, Meyer herself was murdered, her death remaining as much a subject of conspiracy theorists as Kennedy's. Wolfe's deeply probing first novel takes the form of a hidden diary Meyer kept, hoping that a friend would find it after her death. In Wolfe's imagined version, Meyer chronicles her life as an independent, adventurous woman in a secretive company town while also illuminating how her affair with the president transcended the physical and transitioned into the political. Wolfe gives poignant and poetic voice to this na�ve, artistic woman, a free spirit and early feminist equally embraced and reviled by the insider Georgetown milieu in which she moved with ease if not confidence. What could be easily have been salacious fluff capitalizing on JFK's sexual proclivities is, instead, a compassionate and intricate portrait of a woman's psyche. By placing Meyer at the nexus of one of the twentieth century's definitive eras, Wolfe's inspired study of a cryptic woman is credible and haunting.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)