Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath

In the summer of 1962, nineteen-year-old Mimi Beardsley arrived by train in Washington, D.C., to begin an internship in the White House press office. The Kennedy Administration had reinvigorated the capital and the countryand Mimi was eager to contribute. For a young woman from a privileged but sheltered upbringing, the job was the chance of a lifetime. Although she started as a lowly intern, Mimi made an impression on Kennedys inner circle and, after just three days at the White House, she was presented to the President himself.

Almost immediately, the two began an affair that would continue for the next eighteen months.

In an era when women in the workplace were still considered girls, Mimi was literally a girl herselfnave, innocent, emotionally unprepared for the thrill that came when the Presidents charisma and power were turned on her full-force. She was also unprepared for the feelings of isolation that would follow as she fell into the double life of a college student who was also the secret lover of the most powerful man in the world. Then, after the Presidents tragic death in Dallas, she grieved in private, locked her secret away, and tried to start her life anew, only to find that her past would cast a long shadowand ultimately destroy her relationship with the man she married.

In 2003, a Kennedy biographer mentioned a tall, slender, beautiful nineteen-year-old college sophomore and White House intern, who worked in the press office in reference to one of the Presidents affairs. The disclosure set off a tabloid frenzy and soon exposed Mimi and the secret that she had kept for forty-one years. Because her past had been revealed in such a shocking, public way, she was forced, for the first time, to examine the choices shed made. She came to understand that shutting down one part of her life so completely had closed her off from so much more.

No longer defined by silence or shame, Mimi Alford has finally unburdened herself with this searingly honest account of her life and her extremely private moments with a very public man. Once Upon a Secret offers a new and personal depiction of one of our most iconic leaders and a powerful, moving story of a woman coming to terms with her past and moving out of the shadows to reclaim the truth.