Don’t let it be forgot that for one brief, shining moment, there was Camelot.
This line, from John F. Kennedy’s favorite Broadway musical, Camelot, applies equally well to the Kennedys, to their era, and to the exciting life and times of the author of this sparkling memoir, Loudell Insley.
Loudell Insley writes unguardedly, often tongue in cheek, of her proper Christian upbringing. ‘Mother’, the raging bastion of all that is good – a veritable ‘Church Lady’ – presides over a family entrenched in good old conservative values. Mother and family are accordingly shocked when Loudell metaphorically embraces The Adversary, ending up as an aide for Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Her account of the winding road that led to that position is fraught with adventure and wry looking back. First, she is sent abroad (by Mother) to do Methodist missionary work high in the Andes in Peru. Then she gets her first job in Washington D.C., working for the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association. The narrative up to and beyond this point is crisp, well done, always humorous. She bears the slings and arrows of (sometimes) outrageous fortune with panache.
Life on a Road Less Travelled is a dramedy rife with incident, character and reflection. The narrator’s voice is refreshingly innocent throughout a veritable hurricane of well-handled incident and occasional but life-changing loss.
Loudell gives an insider’s view of received history: the infamous Incident (in which Mary Jo Kopechne, in a capsized car on Chappaquiddick Island, drowns); the assassination of Martin Luther King, then of Robert F. Kennedy (this on June 6, 1968); and lots more. The reader gets a birds’ eye view, sharing the excitement of campaign trails and election nights. We are behind the scenes, voyeurs witnessing the machinations and strategies of liberal constituency-raising (such as pushing through immigrant entitlements.) RFK’s push to sell American F-14 fighter jets to Israel gets him gunned down in California.
Loudell pulls no punches. We feel her pain as she endures and writes of her trials and tribulations as an affable, very bright and very attractive young woman amidst an eyrie of sometimes predatory men. Spirits, tempers, and throttles run high in this generous and lovely account of the Kennedy world as lived by Insley. It is memoir; it is history; it is almost auto-fiction. Millennials and Generation Xers will enjoy a rare window into the recent past; those who lived through those years will resonate with recognition, grief, and joy.
