Like death and taxes, Kennedy books have taken on an inevitability all their own, but if you are thinking “Not another one!” don’t be so fast. This one, about the family’s mentally disabled daughter, takes a fresh and often merciless look at the wall they built around introspection that made it impossible for them to confront their insecurities.
Rosemary Kennedy was born at home, but there was nothing ominous about that. Home birthing was still widespread in 1918. The first two Kennedy children, Joe Jr. and Jack, had been born at home with no ill effects. The practice could be rough on the poor, but for those who could afford it, it meant a house call by a prominent obstetrician and round-the-clock prenatal services from his specially trained obstetrical nurses. Joe Kennedy, already a rich man and getting richer by the minute, had escaped Irish Boston to a house in the Protestant suburbs and turned it into a virtual obstetrical hospital. Rose had a full-time nurse to take all her signs and vitals until labor started, whereupon the doctor would be called to come and deliver the baby.
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