دانلود کتاب The Missing Kennedy: Rosemary Kennedy and the Secret Bonds of Four Women

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Rosemary (Rosie) Kennedy was born in 1918, the first daughter of a wealthy Bostonian couple who would later head one of America’s most famous and celebrated families.

Elizabeth Koehler was born in 1957, the first and only child of a struggling Wisconsin farm family.

What, besides their religion, did these two very different Catholic women have in common?

One person: Stella Koehler, a charismatic woman of the cloth who became Sister Paulus Koehler after taking her vows with the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis of Assisi. 

Sister Paulus was Elizabeth's Wisconsin aunt. For thirty-five years—indeed much of her adult life—Sister Paulus was Rosie Kennedy’s caregiver.

And a caregiver, tragically, had become necessary after Rosie, a slow learner prone to emotional outbursts, underwent one of America’s first lobotomies—an operation Joseph Kennedy was assured would normalize Rosie’s life. It did not. The procedure instead drastically worsened Rosie’s condition.

After the procedure, Joseph Kennedy sent Rosie to Saint Coletta in rural Wisconsin, a Catholic-run home for the mentally ill. For the next two decades, she did not see her siblings, her parents, or any other relative, the doctors having issued stern instructions that even the occasional family visit would be emotionally disruptive to Rosie.

Following Joseph Kennedy’s stroke in 1961, the Kennedy family, led by Rose Kennedy and her daughter Eunice Kennedy Shriver, resumed face to face contact with Rosie.

It was also about this time that a young Elizabeth Koehler began paying visits to Rosie.

In this poignant and important memoir, based in part on Sister Paulus’ private notes and augmented by nearly one-hundred never-before-seen photos, Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff recalls the many happy and memorable times spent with the “missing Kennedy.” 

Ten years after Rosie’s death comes a highly personal yet fitting testimonial to a sad but truly meaningful and important life.