by Paula McLain
First published 2011
Hadley Richardson has nearly abandoned hope for love when she meets Ernest Hemingway in 1920 Chicago. After a rapid courtship and marriage, they sail to Paris and join the celebrated Lost Generation alongside Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and the Fitzgeralds. The Jazz Age expatriate community celebrates hard drinking and fast living while scorning conventional marriage and fidelity. Ernest fights to discover his literary voice, channeling his experiences with Hadley and their bohemian friends into what will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley works to preserve her identity as Ernest's demands intensify and her roles as wife, friend, and creative inspiration grow more difficult. Beautiful women and competitive personalities surround them in their volatile social circle. Their powerful connection faces its greatest test when deception threatens to destroy everything they have built together. The story captures their love and conflicted loyalties with particular poignancy because Hemingway later wrote he would have preferred death to loving anyone other than Hadley.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, biographical-fiction
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Paris, Chicago
Period: 1920s
336 pages · Hardcover · Ballantine Books