The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Our book club chose this book and I have delved right into it.  It's an historical fiction novel set in the 1920's.  It's about Hadley Richardson Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway's first wife and their life in Paris.  The novel opens with Hadley in Chicago visiting some of her friends and Ernest is there too, so they meet one another among mutual friends at a party.  Their is an instant spark among Hadley and Hemingway and they continue to see one another until Hadley returns home to St. Louis, the following week.

Ernest says he'll write to Hadley and he does.  Sometimes 2 to 3 times a day!  Hadley is utterly absorbed by his letters and cannot wait to return to Chicago for another visit.  Meanwhile life in St. Louis isn't as exciting.  Hadley lives with her sister, Fonnie and her husband, and seems quite disinterested of the comings and goings of her life.  Her family history unfolds here.  Her father, a gambler and drinker, lost thousands of dollars on the stock market, and shortly afterward when he could not pay his debts, committed suicide.  Just as Hadley was to set off for Bryn Mawr, her oldest sister, Dorothea dies in a freak accident where most of body was badly burned in a fire she was trying to put out.  Hadley begins college but returns after one year, disengaged and unfocused she returns home to her mother.  Hadley's mother was ill with Bright's disease and it was a slow death.  Hadley cared for her mother as best as she could with the help of her sister, Fonnie, and put her mother to rest.  Hadley had a strained relationship with her mother - one that she thought her mother treated her as if she was completely incompetent.

Hadley returns for a second visit and it seems sweeter than the first.  She and Ernest have good times with friends and get to know each other even more.  Hadley enjoys time with friends at concerts, plays and parties and more time with Nesto.   During this time, she discovers some of Ernest's thoughts from being in the war, and in love with a nurse, his dislike of his mother, and his struggle to make it as a writer.   

November 22 - 20 minutes
November 23 - 20 minutes
November 25 - 30 minutes
November 26 - 45 minutes