Here's a tight, well-written story of a man (Major James Brionne, formerly of the U.S. Army) whose home in Virginia was torched and his wife killed by a gang set on destroying him because of his previous work which led to the arrest, trial, conviction, and hanging of the murderer Dave Allard.

The time is the early 1870s. Brionne with his son Mat (who had barely managed to escape the clutches of the Allard Gang in Virginia) make their way out west to Utah Territory to eke out a new life there in the desert landscape. There they are tracked down by the Allards and the outcome is not without its thrills and chills.

When I first became aware of the novel, "THE MEMOIRS OF JOHN F. KENNEDY", and its premise, I was highly skeptical. Alternative history novels are hardly my cup of tea. Many of the practitioners of the genre - from my perspective - tend to get carried away with their story ideas and concoct novels that take far too many liberties with established historical timelines and personalities, reshaping them in ways that hardly seem plausible or feasible. 

Yet, in the case of this novel by Donald James Lawn, I was intrigued. Its premise is based on President Kennedy having survived the assassination attempt against him in Dallas, TX, on November 22, 1963. JFK makes a slow, painful recovery, runs for re-election (against Barry Goldwater) and decisively wins a second term in 1964. Given a two-term Kennedy presidency, the courses of a host of issues that shaped and defined the 1960s - e.g. Vietnam, Civil Rights, and U.S.-Soviet relations - were altered in some rather intriguing ways. I confess that, as President Kennedy is one of my heroes, I wanted so much to believe in what this novel was about. Which is why I read it with a highly critical eye. 

Lawn has crafted a novel that realizes a credible scenario that might have come to pass had JFK not been assassinated and juxtaposes it brilliantly with the relationship Kennedy forms with a Washington Post journalist (by the name of Patrick Hennessey) who came to his attention both through Hennessey's book (an exposé of the McCarthy trials, which JFK much admired) and from the time he briefly covered JFK's re-election campaign on Air Force One during the late summer of 1964. Four years later, as JFK's tenure in the White House draws to a close, Hennessey is enlisted by the President to help in writing his memoirs. This is done discreetly because JFK doesn't want to be seen (by some members of his administration) as tipping his hand towards the type of story he wants told of his Presidency, as well as the legacy he wishes to leave the country and the world at large. 

In this novel, Lawn takes the reader both through the first crucial weeks after the assassination attempt, and also through the developing personal relationship between both JFK and Hennessey during September and October of 1968. To keep these 2 interconnecting stories both in one novel in this way, isn't easy. But the way JFK, Jackie Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, LBJ, and several of President Kennedy's closest aides (Dave Powers, Pierre Salinger, and Kenny O'Donnell) are fleshed out, lend considerable credibility to this novel. I really felt that Lawn had captured through several of the JFK - Hennessey conversations (in the White House, on the golf links at Glen Ora, or at Hyannisport), the essence and spirit of JFK the man. Lawn could easily have made a mess of this novel. But I salute him for making a novel that made me want so much to experience the world as it might have been had President Kennedy not been so cruelly taken away from us. 

For those of us who read Robert MacNeil's debut novel, "BURDEN OF DESIRE" (and LOVED it as I did), the young war widow Julia Robertson returns in this novel. The year is 1919. The First World War has ended and Canada has gained from it a greater sense of itself, having sacrificed 67,000 men in battle, or roughly 10% of the total number of Canadians who were mobilized. Julia has largely come to terms with her husband's death 2 years earlier. But she's not quite sure what she wants to do with her life. Living in Halifax (Nova Scotia) with its social code a carryover from Victorian times is stultifying and stifling for her. Julia feels herself a modern woman with wide-ranging interests in the arts, literature, and psychology (in particular, the Jungian and Freudian Schools). She is, at 28, a deeply passionate woman, and has struck up a special friendship with Stewart MacPherson, who was last seen in "Burden of Desire." He is a professor of psychology at Dalhousie University and one of the pioneer exponents of Freudian psychoanalysis in Halifax, offering specialized therapy to returning veterans suffering from shell-shock.

Much as Julia enjoys Stewart's company and the times they have spent together since becoming acquainted in the aftermath of the tragic Halifax Explosion, which devastated a significant part of the city in December 1917, she does not feel what she would consider as love for him. Their relationship, which on the surface is platonic, has also had its hotly passionate moments, which both have taken pains to keep discreet from family and friends. Their relationship undergoes a subtle change when Julia receives in the spring a letter from a British naval officer (Neville Boiscoyne) she had briefly met at a party several weeks after learning of her husband's death. Neville, acting as equerry to the Prince of Wales, would be returning to Canada that August (1919) as part of a tour the Prince was making to various parts of the Empire. Julia finds herself thrilled at the thought of seeing Neville again and becoming better acquainted. There was, she had to admit to herself, a warm and magnetic attraction she felt that also stirred deep, sexual yearnings for him. (And Neville felt the same way about Julia.)

MacNeil also has shifts in time and place to illustrate certain crucial experiences in Julia's life that cause her to make some major life changes. These shifts sometimes take place within a chapter or across different chapters. For instance, there are scenes between Julia and her former sister-in-law Lucy that are really endearing, because from their dialogue, it becomes abundantly clear how well they get along with each other and freely share confidences. (Lucy's husband Harry, in contrast to Julia's, rose to high rank during the war and survived combat without a scratch. His record was so outstanding that he was appointed as an aide to the Canadian Prime Minister during the Paris Peace Conference. Indeed, it was Harry who was able to wrangle invitations for Lucy, Julia, Stewart, the local Anglican priest Peter Wentworth (with whom Julia had an unwanted and embarrassing encounter in "Burden of Desire) and his wife Margery (who craves to be the center of attention) to have dinner with the Prince and Neville aboard the ship HMS Renown.) There are also scenes of the subsequent journey Julia makes to Britain (where she meets Neville's family) and France (where she renews her acquaintance with the painter J.W. Morrice --- a real-life Canadian painter of some distinction living on the Côte d'Azur --- for whom she poses for a painting early in 1920).

There are also a lot of "juicy bits" and surprises that take place in the novel. In fact, the ending came as a complete surprise to me. But I leave it to you, reader of this review, to read "PORTRAIT OF JULIA" for yourself, so that you can savor and enjoy this richly nuanced novel. [However if you're really keen on knowing the particulars about Julia Robertson, read "BURDEN OF DESIRE" first.]