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Mrs. Paine's Garage: And the Murder of John F. Kennedy
by Thomas Mallon
Published: 2003-11-10
Paperback : 240 pages
Paperback : 240 pages
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Exactly forty years have passed since Ruth Hyde Paine, a Quaker housewife in suburban Dallas, offered shelter and assistance to a young man named Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian wife, Marina. Mrs. Paine's Garage is the tragic story of this well-intentioned woman who found Oswald the job ...
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Introduction
Exactly forty years have passed since Ruth Hyde Paine, a Quaker housewife in suburban Dallas, offered shelter and assistance to a young man named Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian wife, Marina. Mrs. Paine's Garage is the tragic story of this well-intentioned woman who found Oswald the job that put him six floors above Dealey Plaza-into which, on November 22, 1963, he fired a rifle he'd kept hidden inside Mrs. Paine's house. But this is also a tale of survival and resilience: the story of a devout, open-hearted woman who weathered a whirlwind of suspicion and betrayal, and who refused to allow her connection to the calamity of that November to destroy her life. From these stories Thomas Mallon has fashioned an account of generosity and secrets, tragic might-have-beens and eerie coincidences, that unfolds with a gripping inevitability.
Ruth Paine befriended Marina Oswald and found Marina's husband, Lee Harvey, a job in the Texas State Book Depository. Thomas Mallon's Mrs. Paine's Garagerevisits the brief intersection of these three lives--what he calls a "collision of innocent intentions and unforeseen enormities." Mallon details the nine-month Paine/Oswald friendship and its rapid post-assassination disintegration. He then sketches Paine's life since (from her testimony before various congressional committees to her current low-profile residence in Florida) and summarizes Paine's place in the churning, obsessive world of conspiracy theorists with snippets of humor. (Former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison is "Elmer Gantry with subpoena power.") This extended footnote to a footnote to a tragedy, though losing focus and energy by its end, is brisk, revelatory and even-handed. It also handily dispels several seemingly ominous coincidences about the events of November 22, 1963. --H. O'Billovitch
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