Joan Haverty
Joan and Jack Kerouac met, were married two weeks later, and their marriage lasted eight months. In the meantime, she became pregnant by Jack. Nine months later, and after their divorce, she gave birth to Jan Kerouac.
Sadly, Jack never accepted the responsibility of a daughter, and although he met Jan much later, and talked with her some, he never included Jan in his life. After the divorce from Jack, Joan was on the road herself, moving from state to state in the Pacific Northwest. She remarried in the fifties and had three more children. Jack described her this way: “She really knows how to write from instinct & innocence. Few women can do this…. I see me & her cutting around the world in tweeds, yass…” She wrote endlessly about her life and later termed herself “Nobody’s Wife.” She is “Laura” in On the Road.