The Paris Wife by Paula McLain is historical fiction based on the life of Heminway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson. She was a quiet 28 year old who met and fell in love with the young 20 year old Heminway long before he became a famous writer. They married and set sail for Paris in the 20’s becoming friends there with Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald and more.

McLain gives the reader a portrait of life in Paris at the time, full of drinking, jazz, sex, art, friendship, betrayal and everything else it entailed. Heminway went on to have many more wives in his life, but it seems his first was the one that meant the most, evidenced in the novel A Moveable Feast he wrote shortly before he killed himself.