I'm really torn about this book. It took me awhile to finally be able to get into it. But once I was I couldn't put it down. It is sometimes difficult for me to read a book that I know is not really going to have a happy ending. And while this book definitely doesn't have a happy ending it was very beautifully written. The lines between truth and fiction were blurred for me on many occasions while reading. 
 This is the story of Ernest Hemingway's marriage to his first wife Hadley. Told from Hadley's point of view. While it is a fictitous story, there are many historial accuracies that the author got from reading correspondence between Ernest and Hadley as well as charting their travels through Paris and abroad. 
 Hadley and Ernest meet in Chicago in 1920 through mutual friends and immediately have a connection. I don't think they really know what that connection is but they keep in touch after Hadley goes back home to St. Louis. She of course visits him again in Chicago and on one of these visits they decide to get married, much to the negative repsonse by many of their friends. 
 They decide to live in Chicago in a small apartment until they can afford to go to Italy originally. Their marriage, much as it was very quick, seems pretty solid and together, they have some money issues but this doesn't deter them from their goal to get out of the states. An opportunity comes along financially and they now have enough money to go to Paris. 
 Paris is the start of everything in this book. When in Paris Ernest and Hadley are thrust into the art world with other writers of the age including Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. At first Ernest and Hadley are the exception to the rule. They are only for each other while everyone around them seems to be in open relationships. But as Ernest throws himself more and more into his work he immerses himself more into their world where eventually he convinces himself (to feel less guilty I don't know) that he too can have everything without consequences. Here begins the downard spiral of their relationship with Hadley stuck in a position where she doesn't know exactly who she is or what she wants, but she knows that she needs to figure it out. 
 As I said, this book was so well written at times I forgot that the majority of it is fiction. I think that is a testament to how well the author studied and began to know her subjects, mainly Hadley of course. 
 Pretty much anyone who knows even a little about Ernest Hemingway knows how the story ends. But this isn't about Ernest it's about Hadley. About how a woman who was truly and deeply in love with a man who hurt her could pick up and do what was best for herself. How the majority of their marriage was all about her being there for him. And now she has to figure out her own way. 
 In the end, I was happy for Hadley finally making the best decision when no one else was going to make it. I liked that, for Hadley, there was life after Ernest.