"[R]eads like a novel, filled with strongly drawn characters and a wealth of lively detail.... The book offers as much insight into the creative process as it does into this crucial period of our history."—Lee Smith
In the years between
A Farewell to Arms
and
For Whom the Bell Tolls
, Ernest Hemingway matured as a writer against the backdrop of Cuban revolutions, African game trails, Key West impoverishment, and the Spanish Civil War. He experimented in fiction and nonfiction, pushing his limits as a writer, in such works as
Death in the Afternoon
,
Green Hills of Africa
, and
To Have and Have Not
. In this "masterpiece in the making," Reynolds brings us so close to Hemingway that "you can all but smell Hemingway's whisky breath coming off the pages" (
Library Journal
).