Hunting with Hemingway, by Hilary Hemingway and Jeffry P. Lindsay

This was an interesting read.  Hilary Hemingway is the niece of Ernest Hemingway and Jeffry Lindsay is her husband.  Both are accomplished writers themselves.  Hilary is the daughter of Leicester Hemingway who was Ernest’s younger brother.

The book came about from an audio cassette tape that was left to Hilary from her mother.  Her mother died fifteen years after the suicide of Leicester.  The tape was a recording from an evening at his Miami Beach Estate, telling stories of hunting escapades with his famous brother.  The stories were told to a group of his friends sitting around a campfire with a professor doing research on Ernest about his hunting adventures. 

Some of these stories were quite sensational.  There were stories about hunting Nazi U-boats, hunting Kamoto dragons, crocodiles, tigers, cobras, and chasing vicious wild ostriches.  It is never entirely clear if all these stories are true or if they were a yarn Leicester was spinning.  Regardless of if they are true or not they were certainly entertaining and, as with Ernest’s novels, there is no doubt there were threads of truth from actual events throughout.  I am under the opinion from reading the book that they are probably stories based on real events that may have been embellished a bit.  Hiliary and Jeffery describe going through boxes of materials that had been boxed since his death that no one had been through, that did provide some evidence that collaborated with the stories.

The book also gives insights of Ernest’s relationship with his brother and other siblings that I found interesting.  Hillary also writes about the difficultly she had in dealing with the suicide of her father and trying to reconcile the path he chose, that was also chosen by his brother and father before him, with the character of bravery and courage she experienced as his daughter.  She works out those feelings that seem to have been ignored or buried in her conscience for many years and I believe by the end had come to peace with the way things turned out. 

In summary I think any Hemingway aficionado would enjoy this book.  The “lost stories” of the adventures themselves are entertaining and it also has many interesting insights to the moral code of Ernest Hemingway and sheds light on the other Hemingway’s that are also interesting people that lived in the shadow of Ernest.