by Caroline Preston
When graduate student Josie Trask takes a summer job researching an unauthorized bio of Jacqueline Onassis, she never expects that elements of her own life will subtly echo those of the famous First Lady. Preston's skills in this debut novel are such that the Jackie-Josie parallels are not initially obvious. They emerge only as she struggles to understand her divorced parents, unhappy sister and her brilliant but possibly unfaithful husband, Peter. Josie is spending the summer at the Massachusetts home of her mother, who has a new and rather eccentric boyfriend. Meanwhile, Peter has gone to California to take up a tenure-track job teaching American Civilization at Berkeley. Josie plans to join him when her Jackie work is finished, but the couple have frequent long-distance arguments by phone. The way they work out their problems forms the heart of this engrossing yet lighthearted domestic drama. Equally compelling is the author's deft exploration of the way we think about the famous, interpreting and reinterpreting their lives through the prism of our own experience. ($22, Scribner)
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