Hemingway takes shelter from a cold rainstorm and begins writing a story about Michigan in a warm Paris café.

After returning from a mountain trip, Hemingway visits Gertrude Stein at her apartment on the rue de Fleurus.

Stein reads Hemingway's story Up in Michigan and declares it inaccrochable — art that cannot be hung or sold.

Stein tells Hemingway that he and all others who fought in the war are a lost generation with no respect for anything.

Hemingway discovers Shakespeare and Company, and owner Sylvia Beach allows him to borrow as many books as he wants without paying.

Hemingway and his wife Hadley spend a carefree day betting at the horse races, winning enough money to feel briefly rich.

Hungry and broke, Hemingway walks past Parisian bakeries and studies Cézanne paintings at the Luxembourg Museum to sharpen his senses.

After complaining about money to Sylvia Beach, Hemingway calls himself a phony martyr and breaks his fast with a large meal at Lipp's.

After reflecting on his stolen manuscript and a friend's recognition of his work, Hemingway resolves that he must write a novel.

Hemingway meets Scott Fitzgerald for the first time at the Dingo bar; Fitzgerald turns pale mid-conversation and suddenly leaves.

Fitzgerald invites Hemingway to travel to Lyon to retrieve a car left there with Zelda, then misses their agreed train.

During their road trip in a roofless car, Fitzgerald becomes convinced he is dying of lung congestion and insists they stop at a hotel.

Stranded overnight at a hotel, Fitzgerald reveals to Hemingway that Zelda once fell in love with another man.

During a winter stay in Schruns, Hemingway completes the most difficult rewrite of his novel manuscript, The Sun Also Rises.

Hemingway returns to Paris after a long stay in New York meeting publishers, marking the end of his first era in the city.

Hemingway arrives in Paris as an aspiring young writer, finding early guidance from Gertrude Stein and the generous bookseller Sylvia Beach. He battles poverty, hunger, and self-doubt while developing his philosophy of disciplined, truthful prose. Horse racing and bohemian excess compete with his commitment to writing, but a resolve to produce a novel slowly takes hold. A pivotal friendship with F. Scott Fitzgerald exposes the dangers of compromising artistic integrity for commercial success. Their road trip together ends with Fitzgerald revealing the painful secret of Zelda's past infidelity, deepening Hemingway's understanding of his friend's fragility. Hemingway ultimately completes The Sun Also Rises during a winter in Austria before returning to a permanently changed Paris, marking the end of his first era as a writer.

Hemingway's rise from struggling writer to novelist in Paris.

A beautiful woman enters Hemingway's café as he writes; he watches her briefly before losing himself completely in the story.

Stein criticizes Hemingway's reading choices and loans him a novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes, insisting he read only what is truly good or frankly bad.

A woman running a bookstall along the Seine tells Hemingway a book's value lies entirely in its binding and pictures, not its content.

Sylvia Beach invites Hemingway and his wife to dinner on his very first visit to Shakespeare and Company.

After the horse races, Hemingway and Hadley eat a second dinner at Michaud's yet still feel an inexplicable, persistent hunger.

Hemingway meets his old friend Mike Ward for lunch, who suggests watching bicycle racing as an alternative to horse racing.

At the Dôme café, Hemingway joins the painter Pascin and two models at their table but declines their invitation to dinner.

After Pascin takes his own life, Hemingway reflects on how a joyful and hedonistic exterior can mask a person's true inner suffering.

Ezra Pound and Natalie Barney establish Bel Esprit, a fundraising program to free T.S. Eliot from his job at a London bank.

T.S. Eliot wins the Dial award for The Waste Land, making the Bel Esprit program unnecessary and bringing it to an end.

Ernest Walsh takes Hemingway to an expensive lunch at the marennes and tells him he will receive an upcoming literary award.

Hemingway and Evan Shipman discuss Dostoevsky at the Closerie des Lilas while learning the beloved café is about to change management.

Finding Paris winter unbearable with an infant, Hemingway, Hadley, and their son Bumby travel to Schruns, Austria.

A group of German vacationers ignores the ski instructor's avalanche warnings, and nine of the thirteen are killed on the mountain.

A Ritz bar owner named Georges cannot remember who Fitzgerald was when asked, quietly revealing how completely his fame has faded.

Alongside his work and close friendships, Hemingway's Paris is populated by a rich cast of artists, writers, and booksellers who illuminate the city's bohemian literary world. From Sylvia Beach's generous bookshop to the tragic painter Pascin, each encounter reveals something about creativity, authenticity, and the human cost of artistic life. Ezra Pound's charitable Bel Esprit program and T.S. Eliot's sudden prize-winning success show how unpredictable and capricious the literary world can be. The poet Ernest Walsh embodies the opportunistic side of literary Paris, promising awards he has no right to deliver. Back in Schruns, Hemingway and his family find mountain refuge but danger lurks even there in the form of avalanches and encroaching wealth. By the memoir's end, Fitzgerald's forgotten name in a Ritz bar quietly marks how thoroughly a writer's fame can dissolve.

The people, places, and encounters that shaped Hemingway's Paris.

After finishing a story in the café, Hemingway makes plans to leave rainy Paris for a snowy mountain destination.

Stein tells Hemingway he is deeply uneducated about sex and prejudiced against homosexuality, challenging his assumptions about masculinity.

Walking along the Seine to clear his mind after writing, Hemingway watches fishermen and reflects on spring's fragile, near failure to arrive.

Walking under the Arc de Triomphe after the races, Hemingway and Hadley feel a sudden and deep longing for their absent friend Chink.

An intrusive man at the Closerie des Lilas interrupts Hemingway's writing, and the two argue before reluctantly sharing a drink.

Ford Madox Ford brags about cutting a man passing their café table, who turns out to be the Satanist Aleister Crowley, not the poet Belloc.

Hemingway sparring with Ezra Pound during a boxing lesson while Wyndham Lewis watches, and Hemingway immediately decides Lewis is the nastiest man he has ever seen.

Before leaving Paris for Rapallo, Ezra Pound entrusts Hemingway with a jar of opium belonging to the addicted and starving poet Ralph Cheever Dunning.

Dunning is found in crisis on a rooftop and when Hemingway brings him the opium jar, Dunning throws it back in anger.

Arriving at Stein's apartment to say goodbye, Hemingway overhears a violent private argument upstairs and slips out without seeing her.

After the overheard argument, Stein grows quarrelsome and bitter toward everyone, and her friendship with Hemingway never recovers.

Hemingway and James Joyce meet on the Boulevard St-Germain and discover that Ernest Walsh had promised each of them the same literary award.

During a lunch with Hemingway and Hadley, Zelda mocks Fitzgerald for wanting to stop drinking and calls him a killjoy in front of everyone.

Fitzgerald asks Hemingway to honestly reassure him after Zelda claimed he could never please another woman — a matter of measurements.

Hemingway leaves Schruns and travels to New York to rearrange publishers, staying away a long time before finally returning to Paris.

A Moveable Feast is built around a series of pivotal moments in which Hemingway's relationships, beliefs, and identity as a writer are tested and transformed. Stein's provocative instruction, overheard arguments, and the slow collapse of friendships reveal how fragile personal bonds are inside the competitive world of literary Paris. Encounters with Ford Madox Ford, Wyndham Lewis, and the opium-addicted poet Dunning force Hemingway to examine what sincerity and authenticity truly mean. The discovery that Ernest Walsh promised the same literary prize to multiple writers confirms Hemingway's deep suspicion of those who perform earnestness without living it. Zelda Fitzgerald's jealousy and manipulation stand as a cautionary revelation about how personal life can quietly destroy artistic ambition. Hemingway's departure from Schruns for New York to secure publishers signals that his years of struggle are finally giving way to a new and irreversible chapter.