The Labyrinth of 'A Woman I Know'

Jerrie Cobb, a female pilot with a CIA doppleganger, landed in Dallas on November 22

CAUTION: Spoilers abound.

The cover of Mary Haverstick’s remarkable new book, “A Woman I Know,” promises a tale of female spies, double identities, and “a new story of the JFK Assassination.”

Perhaps that order should be reversed, for the book is primarily a riveting new take on the JFK assassination, in which women spies of questionable identity play a leading role.  

The author, an independent filmmaker, had set out to make a film about the leader of a group of women who underwent tests to qualify as astronauts in the early 1960s.

But, just as the film was set to begin in earnest, she happened upon information that cast doubt on the identity of the woman at the center of the film. Or rather, it opened the door to many possible identities for the heroine.

Haverstick spent the next decade-plus in a place she never expected to find herself: combing through the labyrinthine files of the John F. Kennedy assassination at the National Archives in Washington DC and elsewhere. All the while, she maintained a relationship with her central character, whose depths she cautiously attempted to plumb.