Tattered Cover Has Fallen For...

A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley.

Chicago, 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 and her life changes forever. 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. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Despite their extraordinary bond, they eventually 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.

A 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.




Jackie says:
"McLain has done the impossible--she's convinced me to read Ernest Hemingway. She did this by introducing Hadley, his first wife, in the pages of The Paris Wife, which is the tale of their courtship, marriage and life in Europe, Paris mostly. She was 28, he was 21, and they were exactly what the other needed. Hadley, who had been treated, perhaps erroneously, as a bit of an invalid and as such had a very limited life up until a visit to a school friend in Chicago introduced her to the larger than life young man suffering from PTSD and generally running wild. He gave her a life...sweeping her off to Paris as soon as they married. She gave him stability--someone to love him, to wake him from his nightmares, to be his home. They fell into a crowd of the "larger than life"--Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, The Murphys, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein-- where Ernest eagerly soaked up advice and lifestyle, becoming more like them everyday while Hadley remained steadfast. The highs got higher and the lows got lower until, at last, Hadley had had enough. In essence, this is a re-telling of A Moveable Feast, through the eyes of Hadley, the person about whom Ernest said, "I wished I'd died before I ever loved any other woman but her." That's the kind of love you want to believe exists--or at least I do. And that's exactly what makes this book so impossible to put down."


Joe says:
"Do yourself a favor, dear reader, and give yourself to this wonderful book. In The Paris Wife, Paula McLain brings back to life Hadley Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway's first wife. This fictional account tells of their meeting in Chicago and their life in Paris of the 1920's, chronicled in Hemingway's posthumous The Moveable Feast.

Hemingway is known as such a man's man, a man's writer: four wives, numerous lovers, such manly & thrilling adventures, that it may seem almost daring to explore his life from the perspective of one of the women in his life. But it does seem to provide a more complete picture of Hemingway. In The Paris Wife, Hadley is not only an ardent supporter of his writing, but his best friend, his lover and his wife. She is his confidant, hid sounding board, and a co-imbiber. She says in the book that she actively took a supporting role to Hemingway, that it was their decision together. But she is so thoroughly realized, so completely brought to life that I found myself rooting for her even among a story I know so well from him. This book is very difficult to put down, so compellingly is it written. McLain really brings post-World War I Paris alive, and provides another view of their friendships with some of the early 20th century's most famous writers: F Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Alice Toklas, Sherwood Anderson among others. And she paints Hemingway's growing interest in Spain and bullfighting that so many of us know him for, all through the eyes of his loving first wife, Hadley. Really, I loved this book, and think you will,too."