Book blog: Author puts spotlight on Ernest Hemingway's wives

SANDUSKY — Cleveland author Paula McLain's literary career is closely tied to the life of a famous American novelist, Ernest Hemingway, who died four years before McLain was even born.McLain's breakthrough book was "The Paris Wife," a 2011 novel about Hemingway's first wife, Hadley Richardson. During Hemingway's marriage to Hadley, he went from being an unknown to the author of the acclaimed "The Sun Also Rises." The couple lived in Paris, rubbing shoulders with notables such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.McLain's new novel, "Love and Ruin," out this year, is about Hemingway's third wife, foreign correspondent and author Martha Gellhorn, during a very different time when Hemingway was the most famous writer in the U.S."The Paris Wife," a bestseller, describes how Hemingway discovered he enjoyed writing in Paris cafes. McLain, who came to Sandusky Wednesday to meet with members of Erie County's Omni Book Club at the Sandusky Yacht Club, wrote "The Paris Wife" sitting every day inside the Cedar Road Starbucks in Cleveland Heights."I was 100 percent conscious of having that same delicious and privileged experience of what he called, 'going all out'," she said. "It's so romantic, too, writing in cafes and pouring out your heart and soul … I did feel like I was channeling him."McLain is best known for her novels, but she actually began as a poet.It was not a path to fame."I couldn't give my work away to the mailman," she told the Omni club.McLain had a difficult early life. Her parents both abandoned her, and she and her sisters grew up in foster homes in California until she aged out of the system.When she would talk about it with friends at the University of Michigan, they would urge her to write about it. She decided to take their advice, penning her memoir and first work of prose, "Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses." The book enjoyed good reviews and was followed up with a coming of age novel, "A Ticket to Ride," but fame didn't arrive until "The Paris Wife."Two of McLain's novels have been optioned for movies: "The Paris Wife" and "Circlng the Sun," about aviator Beryl Markham in 1920s Kenya. She's just read the script for "Circling the Sun," which she says is "so beautiful," but Hollywood is a wait and see game."Whether or not they will ever get made into movies, I don't know," she said.Hadley Richardson ought to be played by an unknown, as Hadley herself was an unknown, McLain suggests.Scarlet Johannson expressed interest for awhile in playing Hadley, McLain said."I just thought, she's so beautiful, and she's so recognizable, and she's so familiar to us, and so sexy. I can't really imagine that we would ever imagine her as this tired, slightly overweight housewife getting her heart broken," McLain said.McLain said Hemingway's and Richardson's relatives have both told her they liked "The Paris Wife."But we're supposed to take poor Hadley's side when Hemingway breaks her heart in favor of his second wife. Right?McLain said she started the book maybe as a feminist act that would give Hemingway "his comeuppance.""But over the course of writing the book, I came to have a great deal of sympathy and compassion for him and to care about him as a character, and to even love him. Do I want you to take sides? Not necessarily, but I think people do generally take sides. I think he's a very easy person to be pissed off at."Reach reporter Tom Jackson at jackson@sanduskyregister.com and follow him on Twitter @jacksontom.Author Paula McLain signs a copy of "Love and Ruin" at the Sandusky Yacht Club. Official author photo of Paula McLain. Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway's first wife, with Ernest Hemingway and their son in 1926.