Author Paula McLain, Part 2—Love and Ruin

In my last blog I said I’d give Paula McLain’s latest book, Love and Ruin, its own post. McLain writes biographical novels that shine a light on little-known women. This latest book is about writer Martha Gellhorn. 

When most people hear her name, they think, Wasn’t she married to Ernest Hemingway? Yes, she was his third wife—the marriage lasted five years, from 1940-1945. But it would bother Gellhorn to be remembered only in relationship to Hemingway, as she was also a novelist and one of the great war correspondents of the twentieth century. She once said that she refused “to be a footnote in someone else’s life.”

Although Love and Ruin focuses on the stormy, passionate relationship she had with Hemingway, it also shows that she was indeed more than a footnote. The book’s story is how she becomes herself and holds on to that identity even when she could have been totally overshadowed by him. McLain believes that Gellhorn was the only one of Hemingway’s wives who could hold her own with him and match him in courage and intellect. “They were two strong personalities,” she says, “so it is not surprising they butted heads constantly.”

Gellhorn was born in St. Louis in 1908. She was an adventurer from the time she was a child and hid in an ice delivery cart because she wanted to see the world. The trip wasn’t very successful, as the cart just circled around and brought her back to where she started. But when she was older, Gellhorn did indeed see the world.  

She left college before graduating in 1927 to concentrate on a career as a journalist. She worked and wrote both at home and in France, but her life changed in 1936 when she met Hemingway in a Key West bar while vacationing with her mother and brother. They quickly became friends. She was intrigued to learn that he was about to leave for Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War, in which the elected government was trying to fend off General Francisco Franco and his army. Volunteers came from all over the world to help. Encouraged by Hemingway, Gellhorn decided to cover the war as well, and she and Hemingway made plans to meet if she could get over to Spain. Initially using fake papers and saying she was a correspondent, she did get to Spain where she joined Hemingway. They covered the war and also began an affair that eventually led to marriage.

As a correspondent, Gellhorn covered the war differently from most of the male reporters. While they wrote about battles and statistics, she focused on what happened to ordinary people whose lives were ripped apart. Her stories featured women with no homes who had to stand in line for bread, knowing they and their could be children killed at any time, or on fathers searching desperately for their children.

Back home, Gellhorn and Hemingway settled down together in Cuba, where she found a house in the hills, restored it, and for a few years lived her dream with Hemingway—two writers working under the same roof. 

In World War II, she lost her correspondent credentials when Hemingway, now her husband, offered his byline to her publisher. Their marriage was already having problems, and this only added to them. Still, she got herself to England and had a real scoop on D-Day. When the legal correspondents were on one of the invading ships, she stowed away on a hospital ship, which turned out to be the first to arrive at the Normandy battlefield. Gellhorn worked as a stretcher bearer, bringing wounded soldiers to the ship. No matter how much horror she saw, she never got used to it, never lost her compassion for the people she met, and never stopped writing about the human side of war.

It is said that after their divorce in 1945, Gellhorn refused to have Hemingway’s name spoken in her presence. She wanted to be known as herself. Paula McLain’s Love and Ruin is a good step in that direction.

If you've read the book, I'd love to hear what you think.

Author Paula McLain Shines a Light on Little-Known Women

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged, and I’m glad that my life has settled down so I can come back to it. I’ve missed reflecting on “reading and writing” and am looking forward to sharing my thoughts again. We’re spending the summer months this year in Northeast Ohio, not too far from the lovely town of Hudson. A great plus for Hudson is its fabulous library which seems to have something for everyone—not only books, CDs, and videos to enjoy, but quiet spaces for reading or writing, private rooms to work in, three different book clubs, meeting rooms, and a variety of programs, including an outstanding author series.

Last week I was thrilled to meet best-selling author Paula McLain, most known for her three biographical novels—The Paris Wife about Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson; Circling the Sun about aviator Beryl Markham; and Love and Ruin about Martha Gellhorn, one of the twentieth century’s great war correspondents and Hemingway’s third wife. 

“I want to find little known women and shine a light on their lives,"she said, "so you feel you know them and have a better understanding of them and their lives.” By choosing to tell these women’s story in novel form, I think McLain accomplishes that goal by bringing them to life in a way that a strict biography might not. The books are in the “can’t put it down” category. 

When I went to her talk, I expected to learn about McLain’s life and books. I didn’t expect that she would be such a dynamic speaker, drawing her audience into her world. She spoke briefly about her childhood, telling us that her mother left when she was four, leaving her and her two sisters to grow up in California’s foster care system. After turning eighteen, she managed to support herself and go to college, eventually getting an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan. 

“And I used loans to get it!” she said, laughing “You can imagine what everyone said: Poetry? You paid to study poetry? Nobody buys poetry.” 

Well, maybe not nobody, but she knew she wouldn’t make a living with poetry. By that time she was married and divorced with a two-year-old son, and worked several jobs, while also writing a novel. It was published, but didn’t sell well. Still, she knew she couldn’t stop writing—writing was who she was.

Fortunately for McClain, she picked up the book A Moveable Feast, a memoir of Hemingway’s Paris years in the 1920s. Based on his manuscripts and notes, it was published three years after his death. McClain was “entranced” by 1920s Paris when so much was going on in the arts. Still a struggling writer, Hemingway partied, drank, and became friends with literary figures such as such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein.

That’s when McLain got her “big idea” to write about little-known women. Although Hemingway’s wife Hadley was mentioned only twice in A Moveable Feast, McLain wanted to tell the story of those Paris years through her eyes, the years when Hadley was loved and betrayed by Hemingway. Her agent asked her if she could write the book fast. Now remarried and the mother of three children, McLain sat in a Starbucks in Cleveland Heights, OH, and went to Paris in her imagination. She read Hemingway, immersed herself in the period, and took Hadley “out of the shadows.” She also managed to write the book in seven months!

The rest, as they say, is history. The Paris Wife went on to be a best-seller, and McLain went on to write Circling the Son, a book about aviator Beryl Markham. She heard about Markham from a brother-in-law who was reading Markham’s own book, West with the Night. “I was hooked after the first few paragraphs,” McLain said. She told the world about this ground-breaking woman, raised in Kenya, who went from horse training to flying and became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.

McLain signed Love and Ruin for me
and my DeLand Book Club. We all
love her books.

Love and Ruin, about Martha Gellhorn, is McLain's most recent book. I just finished it and can only say thank you to McLain for shining a light on this amazing woman. I’m going to talk about Love and Ruin in next week's blog because Martha Gellhorn deserves her own post.

Have you read Paula McLain’s books? Do you have a favorite?