Publisher Description

An inside look at the life of one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century -- Ernest Hemingway -- from the woman who was both his personal secretary and his daughter-in-law.A chance encounter in Spain in 1959 brought young Irish reporter Valerie Danby-Smith face to face with Ernest Hemingway. The interview was awkward and brief, but before it ended something had clicked into place. For the next two years, Valerie devoted her life to Hemingway and his wife, Mary, traveling with them through beloved old haunts in Spain and France and living with them during the tumultuous final months in Cuba. In name a personal secretary, but in reality a confidante and sharer of the great man's secrets and sorrows, Valerie literally came of age in the company of one of the greatest literary lions of the twentieth century.Five years after his death, Valerie became a Hemingway herself when she married the writer's estranged son Gregory. Now, at last, she tells the story of the incredible years she spent with this extravagantly talented and tragically doomed family.In prose of brilliant clarity and stinging candor, Valerie evokes the magic and the pathos of Papa Hemingway's last years. Swept up in the wild revelry that always exploded around Hemingway, Valerie found herself dancing in the streets of Pamplona, cheering bullfighters at Valencia, careening around hairpin turns in Provence, and savoring the panorama of Paris from her attic room in the Ritz. But it was only when Hemingway threatened to commit suicide if she left that she realized how troubled the aging writer was-and how dependent he had become on her.In Cuba, Valerie spent idyllic days and nights typing the final draft of A Moveable Feast, even as Castro's revolution closed in. After Hemingway shot himself, Valerie returned to Cuba with his widow, Mary, to sort through thousands of manuscript pages and smuggle out priceless works of art. It was at Ernest's funeral that Valerie, then a researcher for Newsweek, met Hemingway's son Gregory-and again a chance encounter drastically altered the course of her life. Their twenty-one-year marriage finally unraveled as Valerie helplessly watched her husband succumb to the demons that had plagued him since childhood.From lunches with Orson Welles to midnight serenades by mysterious troubadours, from a rooftop encounter with Castro to numbing hospital vigils, Valerie Hemingway played an intimate, indispensable role in the lives of two generations of Hemingways. This memoir, by turns luminous, enthralling, and devastating, is the account of what she enjoyed, and what she endured, during her astonishing years of living as a Hemingway.

Notes

Subtitled, My Years With The Hemingways.

Author Biography

Valerie Hemingway is a freelance writer and editor. She lives in Bozeman, Montana.To schedule a speaking engagement, please contact American Program Bureau at

Review

"It is one of the best books on Hemingway that I have read, and it has material to be found nowhere else on Ernest, Mary, and Greg Hemingway."
–NORMAN MAILER

"Valerie Hemingway is, with Hemingway's only surviving son, the last witness to have a precious, intimate knowledge of the family. Her account of Ernest's last years and of the tragic aftermath of his suicide is absolutely riveting: essential reading for anyone interested in the curse of fame."
–JEFFREY MEYERS, author of Hemingway: A Biography

"This is the best, and best written, of all the reminiscences of Ernest Hemingway, in part because its adventurous author, Valerie Hemingway, is such an absorbing character herself. For once, the great artist, the hero, and the fool seem to be the same person; and the long list of fascinating people in his train are seen with rare frankness."
–TOM MCGUANE

"Running with the Bulls is hot to the touch. I was not a little dumbfounded that Valerie Hemingway endured and survived the events of her life to write this improbably skillful memoir that frequently made me wish to climb a mountain and sit on a friendly glacier. The author's life with the Hemingways is utterly compelling, and we must praise her for her gifts in giving us the most lucid look yet written at this haunted family."
–JIM HARRISON

"This is a startling, complicated book . . . fresh, trenchant and intimate and revealing, yet sweet-spirited . . . told by a woman with a wonderful voice of her own."
–DAVID QUAMMEN

Review Quote

"It is one of the best books on Hemingway that I have read, and it has material to be found nowhere else on Ernest, Mary, and Greg Hemingway." NORMAN MAILER "Valerie Hemingway is, with Hemingway's only surviving son, the last witness to have a precious, intimate knowledge of the family. Her account of Ernest's last years and of the tragic aftermath of his suicide is absolutely riveting: essential reading for anyone interested in the curse of fame." JEFFREY MEYERS, author of Hemingway: A Biography "This is the best, and best written, of all the reminiscences of Ernest Hemingway, in part because its adventurous author, Valerie Hemingway, is such an absorbing character herself. For once, the great artist, the hero, and the fool seem to be the same person; and the long list of fascinating people in his train are seen with rare frankness." TOM MCGUANE " Running with the Bulls is hot to the touch. I was not a little dumbfounded that Valerie Hemingway endured and survived the events of her life to write this improbably skillful memoir that frequently made me wish to climb a mountain and sit on a friendly glacier. The author's life with the Hemingways is utterly compelling, and we must praise her for her gifts in giving us the most lucid look yet written at this haunted family." JIM HARRISON "This is a startling, complicated book . . . fresh, trenchant and intimate and revealing, yet sweet-spirited . . . told by a woman with a wonderful voice of her own." DAVID QUAMMEN From the Hardcover edition.

Discussion Question for Reading Group Guide

1. Would you separate Valerie's life into two distinct periodsbefore Hem

Excerpt from Book

Chapter 1 Endings and Beginnings The deceased requested no speech or prayers are to mark her passing," the severe-looking young man in the black suit with sleeked-back hair declared without fanfare or emotion. It was a bleak November day in 1986, and I was standing on familiar ground, the little cemetery in Sun Valley, Idaho. I watched the poker-faced funeral director place a small pine-colored plastic box on an oblong piece of emerald Astroturf that covered the freshly dug grave. It could have been a cheap toolbox purchased at Kmart. The brief ceremony was over. The two small scatterings of people standing by solemnly started to disperse in opposite directions. An elderly man, tall and graying, tapped my shoulder. "Do you remember me? I''m George Saviers," he said. I had driven from Montana to Ketchum to attend the funeral for my stepmother-in-law, Mary Hemingway. No one else present had crossed a state line to be at Ernest''s last wife''s burial. The only family members I could see were Jack "Bumby" Hemingway, his wife, Puck, and their daughter, Muffet, who lived close by. Jack had waved as I approached, and motioned to me to stand with his family. At the other side of the grave I recognized a few longtime friends, all locals, led by Clara Spiegel. Dr. George Saviers was among them. I had not laid eyes on George, Ernest''s physician, close friend, and confidant, in almost a quarter of a century. I learned before setting out that Mary''s administrator had asked Clara to take care of the funeral arrangements, snubbing Jack, the eldest of the three Hemingway sons and heir apparent. How predictable that another family encounter should be marred by friction and controversy! I joined Jack, Puck, and Muffet at a local caf

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