George Bernau, 60; Lawyer Who Became Author of 'What-If' Novels Based on JFK, Marilyn Monroe

George Bernau, a lawyer who turned his "what-if" musings into popular novels, beginning with the 1988 "Promises to Keep," an imagined post-Dallas life for President Kennedy, has died. He was 60.

Bernau died Dec. 12 in Washington state of complications from a stroke suffered in October, his family said. He had moved to Washington from Santa Barbara in 1998 to be near his daughter, Erin.

The fledgling author made publishing history in 1987 when his derivative JFK manuscript was purchased by Warner Books for $750,000, a record advance for a first novel at that time.

"It really shakes out memories of growing up and having Kennedy die," Bob Miller, Bernau's editor at Warner Books told The Times about the manuscript then. "

The story about President John Trelawny Cassidy surviving being shot in a Dallas motorcade -- and getting a second chance to keep the promises he made as a candidate -- stemmed from two of Bernau's personal experiences.

The first occurred in 1977 when he was severely injured in an automobile accident. As the 6-foot-6, thirtysomething lawyer lay in the emergency room wondering if the doctor who predicted he would die was right, he reevaluated his life. Given a second chance to keep his promises to himself, he abandoned law in 1981 and began to write.

The second key evening came in 1983, after Bernau had completed a novel called "High Wire Act," which he was too embarrassed to publish. He was in Palm Desert, talking politics with a friend and wondering how their lives and the world might have been different had Kennedy survived the Nov. 22, 1963, fatal shooting.

Bernau closeted himself in his Solano Beach, Calif., home and for five years wrote in longhand in spiral notebooks. By 1988, the 25th anniversary of Kennedy's death, he had published a 641-page success. The book, which received positive reviews and sold well, was soon optioned for a television miniseries.

Unlike Kennedy, Bernau's President Cassidy survives three bullets. He opts not to seek reelection but puts his brother on the ticket as vice president to a Lyndon B. Johnson stand-in called Ransome Gardner.

After the brother dies in a helicopter tour of Southeast Asia, the former president challenges Gardner in the 1968 primaries, forcing him to withdraw. Also involved is the revelation of a failed plot to assassinate Fidel Castro and its consequence of putting a second gunman in Dallas.