I was not disappointed.

Each woman spent a year in Paris in a significant decade of the Baby Boomer generation: the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. Each decade presented uniquely different environments to the three distinctly different women.  Clearly, their time in Paris influenced them greatly, and the experiences and lessons learned were carried throughout the rest of their lives.

Kaplan researched not only the women for each section of the book, but the events of the time when they grew to young womanhood, why they decided to go to Paris, and how their individual experiences were directly connected to their ultimate place in history.

Each woman’s chapter has two parts, beginning with her background prior to Paris, her decision to venture to Paris, and the details of her stay there. The second half illustrates the life of each woman after her return and what became of her, personally and professionally.

Unless you’ve lived under a rock since birth, you know Jacqueline was, and still is, one of America’s favorite and most significant First Ladies. She brought her intense love of history, beauty, and art to bear during her time in the White House, finding and restoring the historic and significant artifacts of the Executive Mansion while acting as an internationally-recognized hostess to the world leaders who graced her table.  Jackie was always French, in her ancestry and in her style of living.

Susan Sontag was the lesser known to me of the three women, and what a year she had in Paris! She left her husband and infant son to travel to Paris on her husband’s dime, explored the community of writers as well as her own sexual orientation at a time in her life when she was struggling to truly know herself and find the freedom to be who she wanted to be. The New Novel was changing the way authors wrote, without plot or character, and she made this style her own. Susan came to be known, first and foremost, as a significant American author and one of the leading intellectuals of her generation.

Angela Davis was a recognized philosopher and teacher when she traveled to Paris. Two significant events occurred during her time there: she learned from a newspaper article that four girls had died in a church bombing in Birmingham, her hometown, and she decided to join the Communist Party. Returning to the United States to continue her studies, she became a professor and an advocate for the American prison system. She spent 18 months in jail for her consequential connection to a courtroom shooting, also related to her involvement with the rights of prisoners.  She still teaches today and has written several books.

Dreaming in French is the first multiple biography I’ve had the pleasure to read and it is unique in that regard, bringing together three very different women with one similarity, which helped to shape their influence on those of us fortunate to live in their time.

Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis The Saturday Evening Post

To her admirers and her critics, this attention is justified; to them, Jackie has always represented more than herself. She was an ideal, a symbol, or a caricature, but never just another American woman. As far back as 1960, the media put her under the kind of scrutiny from which First Ladies are usually spared (or were, until Hillary Clinton). Even after her husband’s death and her departure from the White House the press continued to report and critique her movements, her clothing, her hairstyle, her work—anything to feed the abiding interest of her supporters and critics.

In 1967, journalist Alan Levy spent a week trying to understand this intense interest and “what it is like for a lively 37-year-old mother to live the life of a tourist attraction.” As he reported in his Post article “Jackie Kennedy: A View From the Crowd,” she was not hard to find. Levy saw her several times without too much effort. He was there when she appeared at an art exhibition:

Jackie Kennedy's Manhattan

There were more than a thousand people … and fully half of them were watching for the one we had come to watch. You could tell by the way they talked in rushed little phrases so that their eyes wouldn’t be diverted from the doorway. Repeated assurances of “She’s expected at nine” gave way to “She was expected at nine” and then, toward 10, to “Well, she didn’t swear she was coming.”

At 10:05 … our bartender declared, “There she is!” So did dozens of others, and the words seemed to hit Jacqueline Kennedy like the wail of an air-raid siren. She didn’t flinch: she froze. For … 30 seconds, she was absolutely rigid.

As [she] advanced into our room, her audience became her entourage. Some preceded her with a harrumphing fanfare of “Make way for Mrs. Kennedy!”

There were small flurries of applause. She acknowledged these with a smile. She could clearly have done without this $35-a-ticket ovation.

A waiter said, “She looks tired. She must have many appointments in a day.”

“She won’t stay long,” said another waiter. “She never stays long.” Both waiters spoke of her with more compassion than I’d heard all evening.

Levy was there at Kennedy airport, along with a crowd of reporters, waiting for Jackie and her children to arrive for a flight. When they appeared outside the terminal—

"By staying behind Jacqueline Kennedy, I was photographed with her numerous times ... and now a long-forgotten boyhood dream of mine came true: In Monday morning's photographic captions I was identified as a Secret Service man." Alan Levy, seen here on Jackie's left.

[John Jr.] waited for his mother, who wore a white coat, black scarf and the same frozen smile I had seen at the Madison Avenue art gallery. Little John, wearing shorts and little-boy bruises, reached for her hand, but one of the photographers barked, “Out of the way, kid!” and he obeyed.

So did his mother when a woman photographer called, “Look this way, Jackie!”

The little boy wandered away from the action [and played] with the treadle that operated the automatic door. Here John F. Kennedy Jr. achieved one moment of triumph. A photographer poised for an arty shot through the doorway, suddenly was hit in the face by the door when little John stepped off the treadle. The man exclaimed, “Jesus Christ, kiddo!”

After two minutes of picture-taking, Mrs. Kennedy switched off her smile and entered the terminal where she assembled the children for the march to the gate.

Little John, however, tarried at a poster advertising a movie. This momentary delay enabled the working press to scurry ahead and board the escalator first.

In case she wanted guidance, however, a loudspeaker on the mezzanine was blaring: “Mrs. K., Mrs. K., arriving Gate Three.” For the airline had more than a dozen employees scattered about the terminal to “protect” Mrs. Kennedy from the press that, in effect, the airline had invited. Thus was my quest coming full circle: I was watching an event become An Event.

But if he was dismayed by the throngs of reporters at the airport, he was reassured by the response of passing New Yorkers when she appeared on the sidewalk outside her apartment.

She was standing … and chatting with her brother-in-law, Robert F. Kennedy. He was freckled, sparkling and bushier-haired than any man of 41 has a right to be. Alongside Robert and Jacqueline Kennedy sat the blue convertible, motor purring, with the Secret Service man at the wheel.

Levy crossed the street to Central Park where he could study the reaction of other passersby.

The passing parade continued, but the Kennedys did have a silent grandstand of some 25 or 30 benchwarmers. Nothing was said, other than an occasional “That’s her.” A young father hoisted his baby girl onto his shoulders to watch she-knew-not-what. Seeing this, a couple of mothers struggled to afford their children equal opportunity.

More interesting to me were the reactions across the street. In my five minutes of Kennedy-watching, 11 people walked right past Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy. Three didn’t even notice. Two men and two women broke step but didn’t halt. A swarthy maintenance man in uniform came to a dead stop and doffed his cap with a proletarian flourish. Without a pause in his conversation, Senator Kennedy acknowledged him with a nod.

My favorite was a blowzy woman in a nurse’s uniform. She stopped in her tracks. Her face drooped. Her frame sagged. She seemed as limp and lifeless as a badly hung dress. Then her eyes perceived that Jacqueline Kennedy was smiling, and her ears perceived that Jacqueline Kennedy was cheerful. Slowly, like a sunrise, the woman came back to life. Her mouth unpuckered into a crescent smile. Her face beamed. As she straightened up, her hair seemed to catch the sun. She strode onward, restored and refreshed by what she had witnessed.

No one had mobbed her, or tried to grab her attention. No one sought an autograph or photo.

That much-abused folk ogre, The Typical New York Man-in-the-Street, had acquitted himself handsomely.

This was 1967, however. In June of 1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot, and Jackie had to reassess the risks to which her children were exposed. She became more reclusive, and soon married a billionaire who could give the security she wanted.

Which prompted another wave of Kennedy commentary.

Jacqueline and the young senator from Massachusetts.

Watching the Jackie Watchers The Saturday Evening Post

For instance, the White House is the only building of our national government to become a casualty in war. In 1814, advancing British troops burned the structure to a shell. The interior was completely rebuilt, and though reconstruction began immediately, the Executive Mansion was uninhabitable for three years.

The White House has also reflected cultural and political changes by assuming the character of each presidency. Its furnishings and function changed continually from the time of its first resident, John Adams, with each leaving its mark. Most presidents added something to the Executive Mansion. Many made changes to the architecture and decor—usually without considering the tastes of their predecessors. As a result, the White House became a patchwork of small projects that ignored the overall structure, which was slowly crumbling.

By the time Truman became president, the decay could no longer be ignored. As the White House Museum describes it, “Floors no longer merely creaked; they swayed. The president’s bathtub was sinking into the floor. A leg of Margaret’s piano broke through the floor in what is today the Private Dining Room. Engineers did a thorough examination and found plaster in a corner of the East Room sagging as much as 18 inches. Wooden beams had been weakened by cutting and drilling for plumbing and wiring over 150 years, and the addition of the steel roof and full third floor in 1927 added weight the building could no longer handle. They declared the whole house to be in imminent danger of collapse.”

Over the next three years, the interior of the White House was removed and completely replaced, and President Truman and his family lived across the street. The result was a sound, durable structure that basically reproduced the original White House. But as a 1962 Post article noted,

all the mellow feeling of the old house gave way to a stark atmosphere of solidity. As one Washington columnist observed, “The White House is safe, all right, but it has completely lost its charm. That restoration took the heart out of the building. When those floors creaked, you knew Lincoln had been walking there before you. Now it has no more appeal than the Pentagon.”

This was the problem that Jacqueline Kennedy faced when she moved into the great mansion almost three years ago… she was shocked by its collection of paintings.  Only a few old portraits had survived the whimsical tastes of incoming families; yet even these, Mrs. Kennedy found, were for the most part badly painted or copied from missing originals. To improve the White House collection—not only portraits but other types of painting as well—she searched for the… the best American painters, and added only a few works by foreign artists.

Her [goal] was to furnish the While House with works of art that earlier Presidents might have liked. To attract some of the best art available, she persuaded Congress to grant the White House “museum status,” under the administration of the National Park System—thus making any donations tax-deductible. [Now]people from all over the country have sent everything from paintings to chamber pots, from wallpaper to silverware.

“Like any President’s wife, I’m here for only a brief time,” she has said. “And before everything slips away, before every link with the past is gone, I want to do this.”

Jackie Kennedy’s project was still in progress in 1962 when she took CBS correspondent Charles Collingwood on a televised tour through the White House. The program, which aired on February 14, gave many Americans their first glimpse inside this national landmark. By careful acquisition, Mrs. Kennedy restored a sense of “executive presence” and historical continuity to the White House.

However, her work shouldn’t overshadow the accomplishment of the Truman reconstruction, for this was an ambitious—even audacious project, as these photos from the Truman Library show:

Destroying and Saving The White House The Saturday Evening Post