Hadley: The First Mrs. Hemingway

KIRKUS REVIEW Hadley was and is no Zelda. She was Ernest Hemingway's first wife and she existed chiefly by proxy -- contentedly submissive to both his tastes (whether skiing or bullfighting) and work which she placed above her own demands or those of their child (she had him when he was off on a job). A shy girl, encouraged to enjoy ill health by her family, she turned out to have far more stamina than anyone suspected, following Ernest ""into the fullness of an extraordinarily vital world"" -- Paris (Pound, Stein, the Fitzgeralds, et al), back to Canada, and Paris again where she gave him up -- equally acceptantly -- to Pauline. The author has told her story from existing correspondence and some relatively recent interviews (the '70's) and it serves as a memento rather than a memoir.