Illuminating?a stunning achievement. This is the Hemingway book we?ve all been waiting for so long.
– H.R. Stoneback, renowned Hemingway scholar

Christian regales readers with stories from around the world, revealing the life of one of the most iconic literary couples.
– Minnesota Star Tribune

Christian does an admirable job of painting a vivid picture of Welsh in the early years of her life.
– The Times Literary Supplement

This compelling book transported me back to Hemingway?s world, except this time his fourth and last wife Mary was guiding the way. Hemingway aficionados will enjoy the journey. Hemingway scholars will appreciate the detail, including some new revelations, and the fresh analysis of her life and legacy. Bottom line: an important book that fills a long-standing gap and is a pleasure to read.
– Nick Reynolds, author of Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway’s Secret Adventures, 1935-1961

Timothy Christian has spent years researching Mary?s life across continents and every archive, including troves of information that no one else has tapped. To this task, he brought a sympathetic attachment to the woman behind the Hemingway myth. He has turned up truly fresh and significant information about Mary herself and her life before Ernest, about the courtship and sexual predilections of the couple, and about Ernest?s suicide. While to some extent this story will compromise the myth of the great macho man that was important to Hemingway ? a myth that Mary helped craft and maintain ? it will ultimately provide a fuller understanding of an American icon and the lives he touched. Refreshingly, Christian does not view Mary as a victim, despite Ernest?s callous and violent treatment of the talented journalist who spent her prime years with the aging and difficult master. Christian gives us Mary, a tiny and fearless dynamo, a woman of skill and heart, calculation and vulnerability, who knew exactly what she was getting into when she married Ernest ? and played her hands as best as she could, even as her choices narrowed.
– Carol Sklenicka, author of Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life and Alice Adams: Portrait of a Writer

Sixty years after Hemingway?s death, Christian sets the record straight regarding Mary Hemingway?s complex relationship with Hemingway and his art during and after his final years. Often stereotyped as accepting a sometimes abusive relationship, Mary comes powerfully to life in this intricately nuanced and mesmerizing biographical tour de force. Honest, unafraid and compelling, Christian finally gives us the true gen.
– Linda Patterson Miller, head of the Editorial Board, The Hemingway Letters Project

Bravo to Tim Christian for creating a portrait of my friend Mary Hemingway that at last shows her for the complex person she was. This is a story that needed to be told and we are fortunate that Tim Christian has told it so frankly, so sympathetically, and so compellingly.
– Susan Buckley, author of Eating with Peter

Mary Welsh is a fascinating subject for a biography…well-written.
– The Spectator (UK)

An enchanting read? filled with delightful passages

– Ottawa Review of Books

Living with Hemingway could be downright treacherous, as Mary Welsh would learn even before becoming the great writer?s fourth and last wife. In this fast-paced, drama-packed, and full-bodied biography, Christian has given us the absolute true gen of a woman who sacrificed her own identity while navigating a partnership forged by careless love and deep darkness.

– Steve Paul, author of Hemingway at Eighteen

An extremely well-researched and lucid biography that reads like a novel

– Florida Times-Union

Drawing on extensive research, Christian paints a portrait of a married couple who, whatever their difficulties, ultimately found in each other a rare thing: intimate understanding. With his background as a law professor, including at the University of Alberta, Christian carefully presents his evidence, especially in a compelling analysis of how Mary handled her role as the preserver of Ernest?s legacy.
– Literary Review of Canada

A fair-minded and comprehensive biography of a complex, flawed and heroic figure.
– Vancouver Sun