March 1, 2018
Having focused on Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley Richardson, in The Paris Wife (2011), McLain now turns to his third, writer Martha Gellhorn.As she did with Hadley and with Beryl Markham in Circling the Sun (2015), McLain closely follows previously published biographical material to create her novel. A journalist who landed with the troops at Omaha Beach and the author of books of fiction and nonfiction as well as a play, Gellhorn is considered one of the most important war correspondents of the 20th century. But when she meets Hemingway in late 1936 in a Key West bar at the beginning of this novel, she's in her late 20s and has just published her first book. Ernest is 10 years older and still married to second wife Pauline. Having been burned by an affair with a married man, Martha insists that her deepening friendship with Ernest is purely platonic. The reader is not fooled despite their banal, Hemingway-esque dialogue. Ernest's plan to travel to Spain to cover the civil war there ignites Martha's sense of purpose and adventure. With his encouragement, she lands in Madrid, where she finds her calling as a journalist--the scene in which she witnesses a child's death is genuinely powerful--and the two writers begin an affair. Once Franco wins, Martha joins Ernest for an idyllic life in Cuba that's filled with writing and romance. Pauline remains in Key West, that marriage in tatters. But by the time Martha marries Ernest in 1940, she worries that her husband's oversized personality, magnetism, and talent might crush her own spirit and ambition. They don't, but his selfish childishness, competitiveness, and vindictiveness make their relationship untenable. Martha comes across as one tough cookie, Ernest as a great writer but a small man.This elegant if oddly bloodless narrative is a good introduction for those who know nothing of Gellhorn, but it basically rehashes information and sentiments already available in that writer's own memoir and published letters.

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March 26, 2018
McLain (The Paris Wife) strikingly depicts Martha Gellhorn’s burgeoning career as a writer and war correspondent during the years of her affair with and marriage to Ernest Hemingway. The narrative begins when Gellhorn, who has garnered national recognition for her field reporting on the Great Depression, meets Hemingway and travels with him to cover the Spanish Civil War at his suggestion. The war both horrifies and inspires her to continue writing, particularly one traumatic moment when she witnesses a child being killed by a mortar. While in Spain, Gellhorn and Hemingway become romantically involved and then move to Cuba, set up house, and launch into a productive period of writing and publishing. Things go well for a few years, but Hemingway’s neediness and jealousy eventually poisons their happiness and forces Gellhorn to choose between her own career and indulging his desire for a devoted wife. Realizing her true passion comes from on-the-ground reporting, Gellhorn decides to cover D-Day by leaving Hemingway and stowing away on the first hospital ship to land at Normandy, wading ashore to become the “first journalist, male or female, to make it there and report back.” Gellhorn emerges as a fierce trailblazer every bit Hemingway’s equal in this thrilling book.

Starred review from March 1, 2018
Ernest Hemingway inspired McLain to write three enthralling historical novels about strong, adventurous women. The Paris Wife (2011) reimagines the story of the first Mrs. Hemingway, Hadley Richardson. Circling the Sun (2015) is based on aviator and author Beryl Markham, whom Hemingway much admired. Here McLain portrays the heroic and gifted war correspondent and writer Martha Gellhorn struggling to remain true to herself and her calling as she becomes Hemingway's third wife, while his fame is resurgent and the world erupts in war. Called Marty, she is courageous, empathic, committed, and creative, both admired and belittled for her beauty. McLain has perfected her dramatic and lyrical approach to biographical fiction, lacing Marty's ardent inner life into electrifying descriptions of place and action. Marty dodges shells and witnesses the deaths of children in the Spanish Civil War, travels rough in war-torn China, aids wounded soldiers as the first journalist and only woman in the horror and chaos of D-Day on Omaha Beach, translates her harrowing experiences into vivid dispatches, and, however briefly, revels in hers and Ernest's Cuban paradise. McLain brings forth the deepest, most ringing elements of both love and ruin, the two poles of Marty and Ernest's tempestuous relationship, a ferocious contest between two brilliant, willful, and intrepid writers. McLain's fast-moving, richly insightful, heart-wrenching, and sumptuously written tale pays exhilarating homage to its truly exceptional and significant inspiration.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: An all-fronts publicity campaign, augmented by a 15-city author tour, will ensure fervent interest in best-selling McLain's timely novel about a historic journalist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from March 15, 2018

Best-selling novelist McLain (The Paris Wife) returns to Ernest Hemingway and his marriages in this wonderfully evocative portrayal of his third wife, Martha Gellhorn, a noted novelist, travel writer, and journalist. McLain brings Martha alive, as she first meets Hemingway when she is only 28 and he is already a legendary writer a decade older. Readers experience their romance during the Spanish Civil War and an idyllic time during the early 1940s, as they write together, then marry, and through the bitter breakdown of their relationship as Hemingway feels threatened by his talented and strong-willed wife. The characters are believable and sympathetic. Scenes depicting Spain in violent turmoil and London in World War II vividly convey the atmosphere of the time. McLain's fans will not be disappointed; this is historical fiction at its best, and today's female readers will be encouraged by Martha, who refuses to be silenced or limited in a time that was harshly repressive for women. VERDICT A must-have for all public libraries that should be a book group favorite, especially when paired with Gellhorn's own writings such as A Stricken Field or The Face of War. [See Prepub Alert, 12/4/17.]--Elizabeth Safford, Boxford Town Lib., MA

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