Paul Hendrickson has delved into the life of Ernest Hemingway and done the seemingly impossible: present him to us in a whole new light. With poetic sensibility, tireless research, and dazzling writing, Hendrickson focuses on the period from 1934 to 1961, from the pinnacle of Hemingway's fame to his suicide. We see how, even in his most accomplished period, he carried within him the seeds of his tragic decline. And throughout this period, he had one constant (along with the devils that haunted him his whole life)--his beloved boat, Pilar, built to his specifications in New York City and Maine, delivered to him in Key West, and then abandoned in Cuba weeks before his death. The boat represented and witnessed everything he loved in life--virility, deep-sea fishing in all its competitive nature, access to the beloved ocean, freedom, women and booze, the formative years of his children. We see Hemingway in Paris, in Key West, in Cuba, in New York--and so often on Pilar, or wanting to be. Hendrickson shows the close connection between Hemingway's life and the words that would wind up on the pages of his books; the fictions he invented about his life; how the darkness was always there, and the joie de vivre. We see him with Maxwell Perkins; his friend and rival, F.

Scott Fitzgerald; Isaak Dinesen; Marlene Dietrich; his four wives and three children. We read some never-before-published diary entries by two men Hemingway befriended and spent time with on Pilar; Hendrickson's remarkable reporting brings those two men vividly to life for us. And we get insight into his troubled son Gigi, a transgender alcoholic who died in a Florida jail; Hendrickson had been talking to Gigi for years and memorably relates the powerful story of Hemingway's most tragic son, in some ways, the most revealing. This is a literary tour de force, an invaluable, unforgettable, and hugely original contribution to our understanding of a great American writer.