1969 Avon The Bouviers Portrait of an American family John H Davis Hardcover – January 1, 1970
by John H Davis 
 
The Bouviers is an intimate account of the rise, fall and recovery of one family's fortunes - of eccentrics, fabulous successes and scandalous failure - revealed in a novel-like saga spanning two centuries. John H. Davis, himself a Bouvier and first cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, writes an intense epic of his family's triumphs and tragedies. From humble roots in rural France, the Bouviers have become America's "Royal Family," headed by Jacqueline Onassis with John F. Kennedy Jr. as crown prince and Caroline as princess.The author reveals his family's closely-held secrets, including the inside story of Aristotle Onassis's stormy life with Jackie Kennedy, as well as other private indiscretions. Beginning with the struggles of Michel Bouvier, a soldier in Napoleon's army, The Bouviers continues through six generations. Among the highlights are: Michel Bouvier, the rough-and-ready patriarch who began as a cabinet-maker in Philadelphia in 1815 and amassed a great fortune in his lifetime; his daughter Alexine, who was abandoned at the altar by a European prince and spent the rest of her life as a devoutly religious spinster; Emma Bouvier Drexel, who started a civil rights movement that resulted in $40 million in donations to schools for Afro-Americans and Indians; M. C. Bouvier, who vastly increased his father's fortune, becoming one of the shrewdest Wall Street financiers of his day; and Katharine Drexel, the nun who became America's third canonized saint. In the third generation, when the Bouviers achieved social status and respectability, John V. Bouvier Jr., sought to enhance his family's bloodline by crossbreeding with allegedly aristocratic stock. But he watched his once proud family fall apart when a young son died of alcoholism, and his elder son "Black Jack" Bouvier became a reckless playboy. Then, in the 1960s with the family's fortunes on the wane, came Camelot and a new beginning as Jacqueline Kennedy ascended to the White House as First La
 
5.5