Jack 1939, by Francine Mathews (Riverhead Books; $26.95)

I will be the first to admit that I frequently judge a book by its cover. Sure, I’ll read something with a plain cover, as long as it’s by an author I already like. But I’m a bit of a sucker for great creative cover art. So it was no surprise that I was drawn in by the cover of Francine Mathew’s Jack 1939.  The cover photograph, of a very young JFK in a fedora, with the Eiffel Tower over his right shoulder, was one of the best covers I’ve seen in a long while.

The plot of the book is simple: Hitler wants to buy the 1940 US presidential election in order to put an isolationist in the White House.  FDR needs to know who is running Hitler’s financial network and how the money—some $150 million so far—is

being brought in. He asks Harvard student Jack Kennedy, about to travel to Europe to research his senior thesis, to serve as his eyes and ears in Europe. JFK’s cover is enhanced due to the widely-known enmity between FDR and Joe Kennedy, the US ambassador to England and an avowed isolationist himself.

The book has all the trappings of a great spy thriller: cruel Nazis, disappearing ink, beautiful women, rich boys in formal wear, and Europe on the brink of war. The characters are, of course, familiar, since most are historical figures. Those that aren’t however, are also familiar, due to Mathews’ reliance on clichés. (Femme fatale who just might be a German spy; ugly German assassin.)  

Mathews’ depiction of JFK, however, is novel. Here he is nearly incapacitated by a debilitating illness that renders him gaunt and weak.  And he’s not the rake we have come to know; instead, he loses his heart easily and frequently. He seems to have no political aspirations of his own, while despising his father’s amoral ambition. Most fun of all, we see the famous Kennedy family members in a very human light, such as Rose as a cold social climber and Teddy as an annoying younger brother.

In the author’s notes, Mathews discusses her research and says that she put her JFK character in various countries and meeting with actual figures (such as George Kennan) at the same time that the real JFK visited those places and people. I can’t begin to know how much of the story is real and how much is fiction. In the end, it doesn’t really matter: the book is an exciting thriller in any case.

In her notes, Mathews said that she was drawn to write the story when she saw a photo of a 22-year-old JFK juggling while at Harvard. If a photo is enough to persuade her to write a whole novel this fun, I think I was justified for reading it based solely on the cover!