Hilary Hemingway

GUNSEdited by Gerald HausmanThis anthology with more than 20 contributors from a variety of authors has something to please for every fan. Editor and contributor Gerald Hausman introduces the anthology with a brief history of GUNS. Stories range in tone from The Momaday Gun by Pulitzer Prize-winning author N. Scott Momaday, to Choice of Weapons by New York Times bestselling author Jane Lindskold. There is a spiritual history of firearms as well as a historical one. The truth is, they have been with us for a very long time. Every family has a gun story, a firearm anecdote that bares the bones of the oldest argument there is-the one about the plain old cussedness of the human race. In this unusual and varied collection of tales written by masters of the word, we begin with America's legendary past-with the pirate Blackbeard and the gunslinger Billy the Kid, followed by Teddy Roosevelt and moving forward in time to Andy Warhol. Here are stories that will shock and bewilder. N. Scott MomadayHilary HemingwayJeff LindsayTrent ZelaznyJane LindskoldAram SaroyanJan WienerAND MORE Stories of bravery and murder, stories of love, betrayal and suicide. Sometimes it seems that the gun is doing the talking-not for itself-but for all of us.

"Hemingway and Lindsay carry the Hemingway traditions of hunting, family, and storytelling into the new millennium." —KIRKUS Fifteen years after her father's death, Hilary Hemingway receives a curious inheritance: an audio-cassette of Les, her father, telling outrageous stories about hunting with his famous older brother, Ernest Hemingway. Les clearly aims to amuse the listeners with tales of the Hemingway brothers hunting vicious ostriches, hungry crocodiles, and deadly komodo dragons, but where Les Hemingway gets serious is in defending and explaining his brother’s reputation to a contemptuous Hemingway scholar. Hilary transcribes these stories, revealing the bond between two larger-than-life brothers—and tells of her own quest to make peace with the painful parts of the Hemingway legacy.

Ernest Hemingway always had cats as companions, from the ones he adored as a child in Illinois and Michigan, to the more than 30 he had as an adult in Paris, Key West, Cuba, and Idaho. All are chronicled and most are pictured here, along with revelations of how they fit into the many twists and turns of his life and loves. In 1943 Ernest Hemingway, living in the Finca in Cuba with his third wife and eleven cats, wrote to his first wife: "One cat just leads to another... The place is so damned big it doesn't really seem as though there were many cats until you see them all moving like a mass migration at feeding time." He called the cats "purr factories" and "love sponges" who soaked up love in return for comfort and companionship. He gave each a name that suited its character, including F. Puss, Fatso, Friendless, Feather Kitty, Princessa, Furhouse, Uncle Woofer, and his last cat in Idaho, Big Boy Peterson. You'll also meet his nine dogs, a cow, and a young great horned owl that he rescued not long before his death. Hemingway's Cats reveals a softer side to the writer's character than is usually portrayed by the macho image of the hunter and fisherman. He sought the cats' comfort in times of loneliness and stress, and he featured some of them in his writings, particularly in A Moveable Feast, Islands in the Stream, The Garden of Eden, and True at First Light--all written late in his life and as close to autobiography as he came.