Hemingway's time in the West extended to Sun Valley when he and third Hemingway spouse, Martha Gellhorn, moved to the Idaho resort town in 1939. In " Ernest Hemingway in the Yellowstone High Country" (Riverbend Publishing, $19.95), Warren explores how Hemingway's experiences and the people he met in the Yellowstone area shaped his life and work. Montana author Chris Warren's years of painstaking research reveal that Ernest Hemingway was often at his best – as a man, father and writer – during the time he spent at a ranch on the edge of Yellowstone National Park in the 1930s. "I didn't need to write a work of fiction he's the perfect character, because he's so complex."Īn inveterate reader of all things Hemingway, Worden offers a holiday roundup of recently published books that, along with "Cockeyed Happy," expand on his sense of place and are perfect for gift-giving to book lovers and Hemingway fans alike. "So many things about Hemingway, you just couldn't make up," says Worden. "Cockeyed Happy" has received a variety of media acclaim and Worden presents her fresh research with a page-turning approach that reads like a novel, encompassing a host of Wild West experiences from bear hunting to car crashes, serene days spent midstream in waders to bootleg liquor-fueled dude ranch parties.
In a book Publisher's Weekly calls "an immersive debut," Worden, a Wyoming native, has chronicled the little-known details of Hemingway's time in her home state – including his first introduction to the American West and his summer escapes there with his second wife, former Paris Vogue editor Pauline Pfeiffer, between 19, riding, fishing, hunting and always writing, completing the first draft of "A Farewell to Arms," along with putting the final touches on many works including "Death in the Afternoon" in the cool mountain air. " Wyoming was the blank page just waiting for him to put his mark on it," Darla Worden writes of Ernest Hemingway in her new book " Cockeyed Happy: Ernest Hemingway's Wyoming Summers with Pauline" (Chicago Review Press $28.99).