When We Were the Kennedys

Winner of the Sarton Memoir Award. “[A] marvel of storytelling, layered and rich . . . an account of one family’s grief, love, and resilience” (Maine Sunday Telegram).

Mexico, Maine, 1963: The Wood family is much like its close, Catholic, immigrant neighbors, all dependent on the fathers’ wages from the Oxford Paper Company. But when Dad suddenly dies on his way to work, Mum and the four deeply connected Wood girls are set adrift. When We Were the Kennedys is the story of how a family, a town, and then a nation mourns and finds the strength to move on.

“Intimate but expansive . . . A tender memoir of a very different time.”—O, The Oprah Magazine

“Every few years, a memoir comes along that revitalizes the form . . . With generous, precise, and unsentimental prose, Monica Wood brilliantly achieves this . . . When We Were the Kennedys is a deeply moving gem!”—Andre Dubus III, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“On her own terms, wry and empathetic, Wood locates the melodies in the aftershock of sudden loss.”—The Boston Globe

“This is an extraordinarily moving book, so carefully and artfully realized, about loss and life and love. Monica Wood displays all her superb novelistic skills in this breathtaking, evocative new memoir. Wow.”—Ken Burns, filmmaker

“A gorgeous, gripping memoir. I don’t know that I’ve ever pulled so hard for a family. When We Were the Kennedys captures a shimmering mill-town world on the edge of oblivion, in a voice that brims with hope, feeling, and wonder. The book humbles and soars.”—Mike Paterniti, New York Times bestselling author