Marina and Lee

The Tormented Love and Fatal Obsession Behind Lee Harvey Oswald's Assassination of John F. Kennedy

By: Priscilla Johnson McMillan

Narrated by: R.C. Bray, Joseph Finder

Foreword written and narrated by best-selling author Joseph Finder. The inside story of Lee Harvey Oswald's path to killing John. F. Kennedy.

Reissued to mark the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, Marina and Lee is an indispensable account of one of America's most traumatic events, and a classic work of narrative history. In her meticulous, at times even moment by moment, account of Oswald's progress toward the assassination, Priscilla Johnson McMillan takes us inside Oswald's fevered mind and his manic marriage. When Marina, only a few weeks after giving birth to their second child, hears of Kennedy's death and discovers that Lee's rifle is missing from the garage where it was stored, she knows that her husband has killed the president.

McMillan came to the story with a unique knowledge of the two main characters. In the 1950s she had worked for Kennedy and had known him well for a time. Later, working in Moscow as a journalist, she interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald during his attempt to defect to the Soviet Union. When she heard his name again on November 22, 1963, she said, "My God! I know that boy!" Marina and Lee was written with the complete and exclusive cooperation of Oswald's Russian-born wife, Marina Prusakova, whom McMillan debriefed for seven months in the immediate aftermath of the president's assassination and her husband's nationally televised execution at the hands of Jack Ruby.

The truth is far more compelling, and unsettling, than the most imaginative conspiracy theory. Marina and Lee is a human drama that is outrageous, heartbreaking, tragic, fascinating... and real.

©2013 Priscilla Johnson McMillan (P)2013 Steerforth Press LLC

Critic reviews

"This classic of the JFK assassination literature, originally published in 1977 and now reissued for the 50th anniversary of the murder...unfolds like a Russian novel with an American ending, a tale of galling social constraints, claustrophobic relationships and thwarted ambitions that birth a monstrous drive for self-assertion. Oswald is the most vivid of many sharply etched characters - arrogant, grandiose, calculating but feckless, his narcissism fed by Marxist dogma and Cold War paranoia, seizing a chance to shoot his way from failure to fame." ( Publishers Weekly)

"McMillan achieves with art what the Warren Commission failed to do with its report. She makes us see… It is not at all easy to describe the power of Marina and Lee…It is far better than any other audiobook about Kennedy…Other audiobooks about the Kennedy assassination are all smoke and no fire. Marina and Lee burns." ( New York Times Book Review)

"Fully as persuasive as the conspiracy lore that has preceded it. [McMillan] has a novelist's sense of when to dramatize, through dialogue and the use of exact detail, the crucial twists and turns of domestic life…Priscilla McMillan's extraordinary book makes the necessary and subtle connection between private frailties and their power to change the history of the world. ( The Atlantic Monthly)

Cartoonish narration

The book itself is a vital component of any meaningful study of the (lone) assassin's tortured life and evil mind. It ranks with "Case Closed" and "Reclaiming History" as the most sober, accurate analysis of a sick man's awful crimes. However, the audiobook presentation is atrocious, ruined by a narrator who voices characters in a ham-fisted, cartoonish manner. Oswald, who spoke with a subtle New Orleans accent, is made to sound like a rootin'-tootin' cowpoke, and all Russian characters sound like Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. Michael Paine, a Harvard-educated New Yorker, is voiced like a Texas wrangler. Why? Because he lived in Dallas, of course, so our narrator must ascribe to him a Texas drawl despite numerous and readily available interviews with the late Mr. Paine. The narrator doesn't think you're intelligent enough to know better or to care.

The vocal shenanigans are beyond distracting, they are an affront to McMillan's life's work and an insult to the listener. There is no need for any type of vocal affectation when narrating an audiobook. With very simple voice inflection it can be made plainly obvious when reading a quote. But the narrator thinks that you would prefer his silly accents. Buy the book, read it yourself and make up your own voices in your head if you want, but skip this abomination.

The KGB Should Send This Narrator To The Gulag!

Narrator R.C. Bray is so obnoxious with his faux Russian accent that I wanted to slap him every time I heard it. It really ruined the audio experience for me. Also, assuming the quotes from Oswald's wife Marina were accurate, I grew to dislike her intensely. She comes off as an arrogant, condescending, smarmy, sarcastic bitch. It appears Jack Ruby did Oswald a favor.
Finally, the author really disrupts the flow of the story with her "Interludes," in which she attempts to psychoanalyze the players. Her analysis comes off as mumbo-jumbo nonsense and undermines her credibility. She should have stuck to the chronological history and left the Freudian bullshit out of it.

Not a history buff

I only knew about Lee Harvey Oswald based off of what Stephen king wrote and after that I was hooked to learn more about Lee, but especially Marina. This is a fantastic book!

A good read

I found this book to be apocryphal and circumstantial. There are a great number of facts that will remain unknown. It is a good story. It is narrated well.

One of my favorite.

Psychologically rich.
Details that never get boring.
Published in '77. Events were still fresh.
Excellent.