Though she can’t help but be anxious about his attractiveness to others, she takes the risk. Ernest bowls her over with his aliveness and intensity. Her life has been difficult, strained by illness and death, and she’s all but given up on love and happiness.

Eventually they find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage-a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they’ve fought so hard for.Ī heartbreaking portrayal of love and torn loyalty, The Paris Wife is all the more poignant because we know that, in the end, Hemingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but Hadley. When the two meet in 1920, Hadley’s a quiet, twenty-eight-year-old near-spinster. As Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history and pours himself into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises, Hadley strives to hold on to her sense of self as her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking, fast-living, and free-loving life of Jazz Age Paris. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group-the fabled “Lost Generation”-that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY People Ĭhicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness-until she meets Ernest Hemingway. “A beautiful portrait of being in Paris in the glittering 1920s-as a wife and as one’s own woman.”- Entertainment Weekly A deeply evocative novel of ambition and betrayal that captures the love affair between two unforgettable people, Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley-from the author of Love and Ruin and When the Stars Go Dark.

The paris wife novel