Hemingway's Girl (47 page)

Baker, Carlos.
Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story
. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969.

Drye, Willie.
Storm of the Century: the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935.
Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2002.

Hemingway, Ernest. “Who Murdered the Vets? A Firsthand Account of the Florida Hurricane.”
New Masses 16
(17 September 17, 1935): 9–10. New York: Permission of International Publishers.

Hemingway, Gregory H., M.D.
Papa: A Personal Memoir
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976.

Historical Preservation Society of the Upper Keys. “
THE NATURAL HISTORY ROOM, Hurricanes Case, 1935 Labor Day Hurricane shelf
,” www.keyshistory.org.

Kert, Bernice.
The Hemingway Women
. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1983.

Lynn, Kenneth S.
Hemingway
. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Manning, Robert. “Hemingway in Cuba (Part Two),”
The Atlantic Monthly Volume 216, No. 2
(August 1999): 101–98.

McIver, Stuart B.
Hemingway’s Key West
. Sarasota, Florida: Pineapple Press, Inc., 2002.

Meyers, Jeffrey.
Hemingway: A Biography
. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.

Reynolds, Michael.
Hemingway: the 1930s
. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.

Samuelson, Arnold.
With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba
. New York: Random House, 1984.

Scott, Phil.
Hemingway’s Hurricane
. Camden, Maine: International Marine/McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Standiford, Les.
Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad
that Crossed an Ocean
. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002.

READERS GUIDE

HEMINGWAY’S GIRL

Erika Robuck

READERS GUIDE

READERS GUIDE

A CONVERSATION WITH
ERIKA ROBUCK

Q. What inspired you to write Hemingway’s Girl? Specifically, what drew you to Hemingway
at this particular time of his life?

A. I’m a longtime fan of Hemingway, and when my husband and I visited Key West several
years ago, we took the tour of Hemingway’s home on Whitehead Street. Our tour guide
told us many memorable and interesting stories about the author that I had never known.
By the time I made it to Hemingway’s writing cottage I had that feeling writers get—a
feeling like falling in love—that told me I would set my next book there. Several
weeks later I had a dream that Hemingway and I were standing in the house in 1935,
and he told me I had to write his book because he’d become irrelevant. I started
Hemingway’s Girl
and never looked back.

Q. How did you go about doing the research, and what are some fascinating details
you learned, which may or may not have made it into the final manuscript?

A. Research is one of the reasons I write historical fiction, and is one of my favorite
parts of the writing process. It’s a bit like detective work, and I never know what
fascinating facts I’ll find. Perhaps the most shocking story I found was that of Count
Von Cosel, a man who exhumed the corpse of a young woman he loved; he kept her body
in his home for years. As if the story weren’t disturbing enough on its own, I was
baffled to find that once the residents of Key West found out about it, they put her
body on display for several
days. Rather than feeling widespread disgust, many of the residents in town thought
it was a romantic tragedy that he loved her so much. I had to include it in the novel
as an example of how the boundaries of love can be broken by obsession.

Q. I found Mariella such an appealing character—struggling toward independence while
assuming responsibility for her family. How did you come up with her?

A. I had the privilege of researching Hemingway’s personal documents and photographs
at the JFK Museum in Boston, where most of the Hemingway archive may be found. While
I looked through hundreds of old photos, I came across a photograph of Hemingway on
the dock in Havana with a marlin and a crowd of onlookers around him. In the photograph
there were many poor fishermen, and a young Cuban girl with an intense gaze. She sat
in my subconscious until I started reading about how Hemingway often called young
women “daughter” because he had always wanted a daughter. Then I read about a young
woman with whom he became infatuated later in his life, and Mariella was born in my
imagination.

Q. I, for one, am so glad that Mariella and Hemingway never cross the line into physical
intimacy. Can you explain your intention in exploring the forces that attract them,
and in the romantic triangle you set up among Mariella, “Papa,” and Gavin?

A. Mariella grew up on the docks and fishing boats of Key West, and in 1935 has just
lost her father, the person closest to her. When she meets Hemingway at the dock,
she is attracted to him because she has lost an important man in her life and because
of their shared love of the sea. Hemingway is attracted to Mariella because he is
growing to hate the life of privilege and pretense his second wife’s money has helped
make for him, and Mariella represents a woman who lives a good, honest life. Their
relationship dances the line between flirtation and infatuation, but ultimately Mariella’s
strength
of character firmly sets their relationship in a place of purity and mutual respect.

The dark side of their relationship is that Hemingway has a tendency to use others
for his own purposes, in fiction and in life. Gavin, on the other hand, represents
a man who treats others well, builds them up, and serves them. He represents the ideal
man and the right path for Mariella to follow. When she sees him for the first time
at Sloppy Joe’s, the only path out of the crowd leads to him. That remains true throughout
the novel.

Q. I had never heard of the 1935 Labor Day hurricane before reading your novel. Why
did you decide to weave it into your story?

A. While researching Hemingway’s life and writings, I came across his essay “Who Murdered
the Vets?” I was moved by Hemingway’s vehemence about the negligence on the part of
those in positions of authority over the men who had served our country. This led
me to do more research on the hurricane.

As a writer of historical fiction, it is my desire to illuminate little-known places
or people in history. The Labor Day hurricane of 1935 was buried in history. The men
and women who lost their lives were forgotten. I thought the issues of government
negligence at that time would resonate with people of our time. I also wanted to honor
the memory of those lost by including their stories in the novel.

Q. Would you discuss some of the choices you made in how you tell your story? For
example, why did you decide to begin and end with action set in 1961, around the time
of Hemingway’s death? Why did you choose not to use Hemingway’s point of view? And
why did you make Mariella a widow when she learns of Hemingway’s death?

A. In some ways, Hemingway’s death was such a contrast to the bold life he led, and
I knew I had to include a reference to it. I was surprised how many people didn’t
know he ended his own life, and while I didn’t want to dwell on that, I did feel the
need to tell it.
Mostly, however, I wanted my readers to remember him at his peak, on his boat, living
in one of his most beloved towns. I also think that works of historical fiction that
span multiple time periods show the interconnectedness of people across place and
time, and that is an important theme in my work.

That said, putting words into Hemingway’s mouth was intimidating enough. I didn’t
want to presume to know his thoughts, so I left him out as a point-of-view character.
I did, however, finally give him a voice in the letters at the end of the novel. I
hadn’t planned on doing that, but after reading so many of his actual letters at the
JFK Museum, I felt like I had his voice in my ear for weeks. One day, before I had
even finished the book, I was overcome with the need to write the letters. The way
they poured out felt like dictation. I’ll take them as a gift from the muse.

As for Mariella, I chose to make her a widow in 1961 for a number of reasons. First,
I wanted the reader to wonder throughout the book whether Jake was Hemingway’s son
or Gavin’s son. Putting Gavin on the boat with Mariella and Jake at the beginning
wouldn’t have allowed me to plant that seed in the reader’s mind. Second, I wanted
to be true to the time. World War I vets like Gavin were exposed to gases in the war.
He smoked. He lived a hard life in the sun and on the water. Life expectancy for men
in the 1960s was sixty years of age. Gavin was a product of his time. Finally, I made
Mariella a widow to show that no matter what happened to her, she continued to live
and to live well. I wanted Mariella to be the strongest woman I could write, and I
thought showing her as a widow on the boat with her son was a good contrast to her
mother wasting her life, smoking on her chair, dependent upon others.

Q.
The Paris Wife
by Paula McLain, a novel that imagines Hemingway’s life with his first wife, Hadley,
and Hemingway’s Boat by Paul Hendrickson, a nonfiction study of Hemingway’s relationship
with his boat Pilar, were both New York Times bestsellers. What do you think accounts
for the resurgence of interest in Ernest Hemingway?

A. I’ve been thinking a lot about why the early nineteenth century has become so popular
to contemporary readers, and I believe it has to do with war and economic depression.
It’s only natural that we look to the past in times of hardship, and since 2008 we
have experienced a shocking economic decline, rising unemployment, and the effects
of war. We look to identify with those who have lived through those times for comfort,
for warning, and for guidance.

Ernest Hemingway is a somewhat romanticized product of those times. His life and death
fascinate us, and his work continues to have relevance today.

Q. Do you think that Hemingway’s work will stand the test of time, and still be considered
an essential part of the American literary canon in fifty or one hundred years? How
much do you think he consciously shaped his own literary legacy?

A. I do believe his work will remain an essential part of the American literary canon.
His writings, from his Nick Adams stories in northern Michigan, to the streets of
Paris in
A Moveable Feast
, to the waters off the Cuban coast in
The Old Man and the Sea
, capture men and women in intimate, raw, and often heartbreaking ways. Though he
exposes those closest to him, he also exposes himself, his fears, his vulnerability,
and his own faults through his characters. For every word he wrote he crossed out
at least five words, and the words that didn’t make the final manuscripts are every
bit as important as those that did. He trusts his reader to dig in and find the deeper
meaning in his clear prose, and because his work is so layered it endures.

Hemingway was widely thought to be a myth creator and a legend of his own making.
I agree with that to some extent, but there is so much heart and truth at the center
of his work that I believe most of it came from an honest place. I also think he was
a larger-than-life person, and because the life he led was so different from the lives
of most people, it’s hard to identify with and accept.

Q. What would you most like readers to take away from reading
Hemingway’s Girl?

A. I tried to infuse the book with two main themes. First, I wanted to illustrate
how using others for personal gain is predatory and corrosive. Hemingway used his
friends in his fiction, Eva used Mariella for support, and the government used the
vets for cheap, hard labor. Disaster or near disaster resulted from each imbalanced
relationship.

Mostly, however, I wanted to show the magnificent scope of human resilience. I was
astounded after reading the survival story of a man who was presumed dead following
the Labor Day hurricane, but who showed up in Key West days later. I’d also read an
account of a man and his son who lost almost twenty family members in the Labor Day
hurricane but rebuilt on Matecumbe Key and continued to make a life for themselves
there. These and other accounts of war widows or vets with post-traumatic stress,
combined with stories from my own grandparents, the hardships they faced, and how
they kept pushing forward, living life one day at a time and rebuilding their lives
after tragedy, showed me the fierce longing and love for life that so many have. I
wanted that message of perseverance to stand out above all else in the book.

Q. If you could have a conversation with Hemingway, or any one of the historically
based characters in the novel, who would it be and what would you talk about?

A. Of course I would want to talk to Hemingway. I’d ask him whether he had any regrets
about trapping so many of his friends and loved ones in the pages of his books. I’d
ask him in which book he wrote his best self. Then I would encourage him to take himself
back to the Keys on a fishing boat, where his demons couldn’t reach him.

Q. Would you share some of your own life story, especially what led you to writing?

A. My grandmother was Irish and a great lover of stories. She always gave me books
that most would have considered too mature for my age, and talked about them with
me when I finished. She made me love reading.

My father also used to tell me and my brother scary stories on the way to school each
day. He’d tell long, meandering tales of children exploring ancient trains or old
schools, put in perilous situations, who always managed to outsmart the monsters and
return home to safety.

My interest in writing developed in tandem with my interest in reading, beginning
with short plays and poems, moving to songs and short stories, and finally to novels.
It wasn’t until I stayed home with my growing family that I was able to commit to
novels, which has been almost a decade.

Q. What might we expect to see from you next?

A. I’ve always been interested in the writers of the “Lost Generation,” like Hemingway,
Fitzgerald, Joyce, and Eliot. In my Hemingway reading I kept finding references to
how much Hemingway hated Zelda Fitzgerald, and this fascinated me. I felt as if she
were winking at me from my research as a way to tell me we would meet later.

Once I started reading about Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald I got the same “falling in
love” feeling I had in Hemingway’s Key West home. Zelda Fitzgerald is a main character
in my current novel, and I’m revisiting themes of the way people use one another,
and the relationship of confession and atonement. Zelda’s life is rich with tragedy
and drama, and I’m completely caught up in the world of the Fitzgeralds.

READERS GUIDE