“Hemingway’s Widow,” a vivid portrayal of Mary Welsh Hemingway.

“Hemingway’s Widow: The Life and Legacy of Mary Welsh Hemingway” by Timothy Christian. (Pegasus Books/TNS)

New on the bookshelf: March 19, 2022

Observant biography about Hemingway’s 4th wife

After reading Ernest Hemingway’s Paris memoir, “A Moveable Feast,” while in Paris, Timothy Christian followed it with several biographies of Hemingway and his wives. Most biographers, he noticed, dismissed fourth wife Mary Welsh Hemingway as “being the lowest born of the four wives … or for being a mere ‘caretaker wife.’”

But Christian did not believe this was the case, so he scoured archives, attended Hemingway conferences, and interviewed Hemingway scholars, eventually writing “Hemingway’s Widow,” a vivid portrayal of Mary Welsh Hemingway.

Mary was born in Walker, Minn., in 1908 and grew up in Bemidji, where she spent summers on her father’s paddleboat on Leech Lake. She then moved south to Chicago to attend Northwestern University and later secured a position with the Chicago Daily News.

Later in his life, Hemingway struggled emotionally. He was abusive, he believed his room and phone were tapped, and he tried to walk into a plane’s propellers. On July 2, 1961, he shot himself in his Ketchum, Idaho, home. By this time, Mary’s nerves were frazzled, and she was a habitual gin drinker.

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

DAILY JOURNAL

KANKAKEE, ILLINOIS I FAMILY-OWNED SINCE 1903

— Wayne Catan, Star Tribune