“Hemingway’s Daughter” by Christine Whitehead is live & Mariel Hemingway LOVED the book! Plus, we’re having a GIVEAWAY!

Hemingway’s Daughter <— ERNEST HEMINGWAY ONLY HAD SONS. BUT WHAT IF HE HAD A DAUGHTER? THIS IS HER STORY. 😉 We have a song list, an excerpt and the author is giving away 10 copies of her book!! And to celebrate this recent release, the author is sponsoring today’s newsletter!

P.S. Actress Mariel Hemingway read it and loved it (and marveled that it could have been her aunt!) We even have a video from her, below.

The author says:

Hemingway had 3 sons but ached to have a daughter. I gave him one!

This is not a bio of Hemingway. That has been done well by others. This is the story of Finn Hemingway who believes she’s been born into the wrong era, into the wrong family, and with the wrong talents to get what she needs.

She is passionate about being a trial lawyer when women in 1945 can barely be lawyers. She dreams of epic true love when love in the Hemingway family always seems to end and usually badly. And she wants to be important to her father and the only way to do that is to impact his writing, the only thing that truly matters to him. Since she has no writing talent, that too seems almost impossible.

And yet . . . I wrote the below to go with a BOOK TRAILER. It give you the idea.

The book deals with loss, love, fathers and daughters, great female friendships, and women’s struggles whether 1945 or 2023. (Please consider if you are in the mood for historical fiction but really more mainstream fiction with a huge component of romance.)

So what’s it about?

By the time I was 10, I knew I was born at the wrong time to the wrong family and with the wrong talents to do what I needed to do.

But when you’re a Hemingway, you never give up and I didn’t.

My father was a bullying alcoholic and gentlest man I’d ever known.

He took me apart and then put me back together.

He taught me that love never lasted and that it was everything.

He shaped me, and i dreamed of shaping him, a little–maybe.

i knew that if there was one of us, there was both of us .

But this is my story, not his.

P.S. Mariel Hemingway approves & loved the book!! 😉

EXCERPT:

Hemingway’s Daughter Excerpt

1

June 17, 1961

A mi hija hermosa, to my beautiful Daughter:

Well, Flea! Despite being in prison, also known as a forced hospital stay courtesy of my present wife, I’ve finished the book, the one for your mother. Finito! I never forgot what you said 13 years ago—that it broke her heart that I never put her in my books; wrote her out of my life, you said. Well, she’s in this one, all the way. It’s about us and Paris and the way it was then.

And if I live that long—ha! at least another couple weeks!—the dedication will read, “To Finley Hemingway, My Daughter and My Muse.”

You still there, Flea, or have I bored you into oblivion already? You knew it was always you, right? Without you, do you think I could have written a page of the finest book that ever came out of this much-battered Midwestern boy’s head? “A Single Drop of Red Wine” never would exist without you dancing across each page, hija mia. You were the engine. It’s that simple. And that’s the one that should have won the Noblitzer Prize (Nobel and Pulitzer together!), if it existed. Should we create one? And sure, I might have had some vigor injected at times by some of the “others” who shall remain nameless so as not to bitch the fine mood I have going here (I know you hated them, so let’s not talk about that). But the unvarnished truth is, I needed you, only you, to be proud of the old man, that you were Hemingway’s Daughter with a capital “D.” Not embarrassed or ashamed. Made me try for more each time I sat down to write, one sentence, then another. Sometimes flowing, sometimes drilling.

I’m calling the new one “A Moveable Feast.” And it will make her immortal. Love can do that.

I love you, kid. Forever. No way around it. See you in your dreams.
Con todo mi amor siempre,

Papa.

With all my love always. That was the last letter I got from him, and while a bit garbled, it was him, like he always was. A bit of Spanish thrown in and some of his own odd phrasing. If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t have guessed how ill he was.
He was gone two weeks later. The highs and lows of living with him were over, and the loss of both was as excruciating as a finger bent to the breaking point, then twisted off to be sure you appreciated the pain the first time around. Still, without knowing it, he’d thrown me a lifeline. I now knew. Finally, after thirty-six years, I knew.

Song list

a) I’ll be Seeing you (Sammy Fain)
b) Moonlight Serenade (Glenn Miller)
c) In the Mood (Tommy Dorsey)
d) My heart belongs to Daddy (Cole Porter)
e) Night and Day (Cole Porter)
f) You’re the Top (Cole Porter)
g) All of Me ( John Legend)

GIVEAWAY:

10 books (winners can choose a print book or an ebook). Note: If you are an international winner, the book sent will be an ebook.

How to enter for a chance to win one of the prizes? Just leave a comment below and by 10pm EST, Sunday July 23rd, 2023, I will randomly select ten lucky commenters as the winners (winners can choose a print book or an ebook).

The winners will be contacted and will have 48hrs to respond confirming their email & mailing address (prizes will be sent to you by the author), so if you are picked, do not delay or you will lose your chance.

About the author:

I get my best ideas in the barn as I groom my horse, Nifty. The dogs keep a careful distance as I lift a hoof, scrape it out, then move on to the next one. The repetition soothes me. I begin to dream about women like me, women on the edge, restless women who still want to trust that there is love out there, and that being sentimental is not always contemptible, and that good men are not so hard to find if you keep slogging along, seeking a melody to fit your words. So that’s who and what I write about: restless women searching.