Beautiful Exiles - Softcover

Clayton, Meg Waite

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1503949273 ISBN 13: 9781503949270

Publisher: Lake Union Publishing, 2018

Synopsis

From New York Times bestselling author Meg Waite Clayton comes a riveting novel based on one of the most volatile and intoxicating real-life love affairs of the twentieth century.

Key West, 1936. Headstrong, accomplished journalist Martha Gellhorn is confident with words but less so with men when she meets disheveled literary titan Ernest Hemingway in a dive bar. Their friendship—forged over writing, talk, and family dinners—flourishes into something undeniable in Madrid while they’re covering the Spanish Civil War.

Martha reveres him. The very married Hemingway is taken with Martha—her beauty, her ambition, and her fearless spirit. And as Hemingway tells her, the most powerful love stories are always set against the fury of war. The risks are so much greater. They’re made for each other.

With their romance unfolding as they travel the globe, Martha establishes herself as one of the world’s foremost war correspondents, and Hemingway begins the novel that will win him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Beautiful Exiles is a stirring story of lovers and rivals, of the breathless attraction to power and fame, and of one woman—ahead of her time—claiming her own identity from the wreckage of love.

About this title

Review

“Clayton uses her meticulous research skills to bring to life the wartime years of Martha Gellhorn...Clayton’s take on their boozy, love/hate relationship is packed with details of the war, including the threat of Nazi submarines in the Gulf of Mexico, a dramatic backdrop for her fictional tale of two vivid personalities and world-altering writers.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Clayton delves into the tumultuous relationship between Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, his third wife. The writing is rich with detail; the exotic locales—from Madrid during the Spanish Civil War to D-day on Normandy’s Omaha Beach to the couple’s home in Cuba—are vividly portrayed...” —Library Journal

“In her sixth novel, Beautiful Exiles, Meg Waite Clayton continues to investigate—and inhabit—the lives and fortunes of women who ripped open the envelope of their eras’ social and cultural limitations. This time, Clayton dives into the mind and heart of prolific, outspoken journalist and novelist Martha Gellhorn (1908-98), a war correspondent who also happened to become Ernest Hemingway’s third wife. [Beautiful Exiles] is an immensely ambitious undertaking...[A] love-sex-booze-intrigue-politics-war-literary culture-travel-packed saga...serv[ing] up micro and macro: intimate words and sensuous moments set against the world’s strife.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“So well written that at times I forgot I was reading a novel, and instead found myself immersed in the roar of battle, either on the front lines or in their living room...Highly recommended...The plot is well paced, the characters ring true, and the story reveals the difficulties of two strong-willed people at odds with one another.” —Historical Novel Society (Editors’ Choice)

“Beautiful Exiles is a stirring story of lovers and rivals, of the breathless attraction to power and fame, and of one woman who is ahead of her time in claiming her own identity from the wreckage of love.” —Wisconsin Bookwatch

“A great read—especially with Clayton’s talent for taking years of research and spinning it into something sexy.” —Oprah Magazine

About the Author

Meg Waite Clayton is the New York Times bestselling author of five previous novels, including The Race for Paris, which received the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction Honorary Mention; The Wednesday Sisters; and The Language of Light, which was a finalist for the Bellwether Prize. She’s written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes, Writer’s Digest, Runner’s World, and public radio. A graduate of the University of Michigan and its law school, she lives in Palo Alto, California. She can be found online at www.megwaiteclayton.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/novelistmeg, and @megwclayton on Twitter.

About this edition

• Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1503949273
• ISBN 13: 9781503949270
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 395