Following her last novel, 2015’s Circling the Sun (which I blogged about here), Paula McLain has written another historical novel, Love and Ruin, featuring a real-life heroine, this time journalist and author Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn, born in 1908 it St. Louis, Missouri, is one of the greatest war correspondents of the twentieth century. During her career, she covered the Spanish Civil War and Word War II, reporting from the field in Finland, Hong Kong, Burma, Singapore, and England at a time when female correspondents were rare to say the least. Despite being denied official press credentials partway through the war, she was also on scene to cover the landings at Normandy after sneaking aboard a hospital ship and was the only woman to land at Normandy on D-Day.In addition to Gellhorn’s fascinating career, the book also covers her stormy relationship with Ernest Hemingway. As the press tries to define her as Hemingway’s third wife, Gellhorn realizes that “…I would be his wife first, and myself only if I fought constantly to make it so.” (pg. 281). Determined to achieve success on her own terms, she risks both life and love to follow her calling as a journalist and writer in her own regard.
Other books you may enjoy:
Travels with Myself and Another Martha Gellhorn’s memoir chronicling her globetrotting adventures
Hemingway & Gellhorn Starring Clive Owen as Hemingway and Nicole Kidman as Gellhorn, this 2012 movie tells the story of their tumultuous relationship.
Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War The story of journalists Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway, photographers Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, and Arturo Barea and Ilsa Kulcsar of the Spanish government’s foreign press office during the Spanish Civil War.
Mrs. Hemingway Each of Hemingway’s four wives – Hadley Richardson, Pauline Pfeiffer, Martha Gellhorn, and Mary Welsh – narrates her own story in this fictional account of the famous author’s paramours.
The Paris Wife Also by Paula McLain, The Paris Wife is the story of Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, and Paris as experienced by the Lost Generation, including Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound.