num_pages: 314
description: Chicago 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happinessuntil 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 groupthe fabled Lost Generationthat 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 marriagea deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything theyve 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.
language: English
title: The Paris Wife
publisher: Ballantine Books