Love and Ruin

Set against the Spanish Civil War and the onset of World War II, this historical novel tells the story of Martha Gellhorn, an aspiring writer and journalist who falls in love with Ernest Hemingway, becomes one of the 20th century's foremost war correspondents, and struggles to maintain her identity within a marriage that threatens to eclipse her.

The novel opens in July 1936, as General Francisco Franco launches a military coup against Spain's democratically elected Republican government. Martha, 27, is in Stuttgart, Germany, researching a novel and witnessing the rise of Nazism firsthand. As Franco's Nationalists gain ground with military support from Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy, and as Western democracies refuse to intervene, thousands of volunteers form International Brigades to defend the Spanish Republic. Martha declares the war in Spain the catalyst for her transformation.

Martha recalls her restless childhood in St. Louis, where she ran away from home at age five on an ice cart. In January 1936, her mother, Edna Gellhorn, a tireless women's rights champion, cables her home because her father, George Gellhorn, a celebrated obstetrician, is gravely ill. Martha arrives burdened by their last bitter argument, in which he accused her of being "the other kind" of woman. George's surgery succeeds, but Martha, feeling trapped by her mother's urging to stay home permanently, returns east. On the train, she learns his heart has failed and he has died in his sleep. The loss devastates her, compounded by guilt over their unresolved conflict.

Martha spends the next year grieving, struggling to write, and eventually placing her second book, The Trouble I've Seen, a collection about people devastated by the Depression, with the publisher William Morrow. That December, she, Edna, and her brother Alfred take a Christmas holiday to Key West, Florida, where they encounter Ernest Hemingway at a local bar. Ernest recognizes Martha as the author of The Trouble I've Seen, which he and his wife, Pauline, have read and admired. He shows the family around the island and introduces them to Pauline and his two young sons, Patrick and Gregory. When Martha asks about getting to Spain as a journalist, Ernest promises to look out for her if she finds a way.

Ernest begins calling Martha regularly, connecting her with his editor Max Perkins and sharing his excitement about Spain. Martha secures a letter from Collier's magazine naming her "special correspondent," giving her the credentials to enter Spain. Ernest sails ahead while Martha scrambles to earn passage money through freelance work at Vogue.

Martha travels alone from Paris to Spain, crossing the Pyrenees on foot and catching trains through Catalonia. She hitches a ride to Madrid with Sidney Franklin, Ernest's Brooklyn-born matador friend. At the Hotel Florida, she joins a community of war correspondents, and Ernest introduces her to life under siege, where trams still run to the front lines and shell fire punctuates every evening. One night, after the hotel takes a direct mortar hit, Ernest comes to Martha's room and kisses her. She pulls back, determined not to repeat her history with married men. But the war erodes her resolve. She witnesses the death of a young boy in the Plaza de Santo Domingo, killed by a shell fragment, and the experience cracks something open in her. On a trip to the Guadalajara front, Ernest tells Martha he is in love with her, and they become lovers.

As their time in Madrid ends, Ernest warns Martha their affair will seem unreal once he returns to Key West. She leaves his room feeling kicked out of love.

Back in America, Martha helps finish The Spanish Earth documentary and arranges a White House screening. Eleanor Roosevelt privately warns Martha to keep her head about Hemingway. Collier's publishes Martha's Madrid article, making her a credentialed journalist with millions of readers. She and Ernest reunite in Spain, where they witness the horrific aftermath of the battle of Belchite. Ernest's cruelty surfaces when he calls Martha a "whore" for considering a paid lecture tour; she slaps him. They fight bitterly but reconcile, playing what Martha calls a "game of loss" in which they name all the things they will never share. In Paris, Pauline confronts Ernest, threatening to jump from a balcony; he lies, swearing Martha is only a friend.

Martha's American speaking tour fails to rouse audiences on Spain's behalf. She spends nearly a year crisscrossing Europe for Collier's, writing about Czechoslovakia's dissolution after the Munich Pact and the horrors of Kristallnacht, a coordinated Nazi attack on Jewish communities across Germany and Austria. Exhausted, she flees to Cuba at Ernest's urging.

In Havana, Martha discovers and rents La Finca Vigía, a neglected Spanish-style farmhouse in San Francisco de Paula with a magnificent ceiba tree growing through its foundation. She restores the property and creates writing spaces for them both. Ernest's new novel pours out of him while Martha struggles with hers. She abandons her plan to set her novel in Spain, knowing Ernest's version will eclipse hers, and moves her characters to Prague, creating A Stricken Field. Ernest finally asks Pauline for a divorce. Collier's sends Martha to Finland to cover the Soviet invasion, where she reports from the Karelian front and witnesses Finnish soldiers fighting against overwhelming odds. She returns home vowing never to leave Ernest again.

The reviews for A Stricken Field are mostly negative, and a Time feature ignores the book to gossip about Martha's relationship with Hemingway. Ernest finishes For Whom the Bell Tolls, which launches to extraordinary acclaim, widening the gap between their careers. On November 21, 1940, Martha and Ernest marry in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Martha swallows her doubts. On their honeymoon, she accepts a Collier's assignment in China; Ernest insists on coming, forcing her to compete with him even abroad. On December 7, 1941, news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reaches them. America is at war.

Ernest raises the subject of having a child, and Martha deflects, recognizing that motherhood would end her ability to travel while Ernest's life would remain unchanged. He accuses her of pretending to want a family. Ernest stops writing fiction and develops a private intelligence network called "Operation Friendless" to patrol for German U-boats off Cuba. He drinks without limit. Their relationship deteriorates through escalating conflicts: On Christmas Eve, a drunk Ernest insults Martha in front of his sons and abandons her at a restaurant.

Martha accepts a Collier's assignment in Europe, reporting from London and Italy. Ernest's letters alternate between tenderness and bitter silence; he refuses to join her. When she returns briefly to Cuba in March 1944, Ernest secretly contacts Collier's and gets himself hired as their accredited European war correspondent, destroying the platform Martha has built over seven years and 26 articles. She is devastated. Ernest departs by seaplane while Martha, stripped of credentials, secures passage on a Norwegian freighter loaded with dynamite, the sole passenger on a 20-day crossing.

On D-day, June 6, 1944, Martha stows away on a hospital ship by flashing her expired Collier's badge. She hides in a locked toilet overnight as the ship crosses the English Channel. At dawn, the wounded begin arriving, and she becomes a stretcher-bearer. She wades ashore at Omaha Beach, carrying stretchers between white-taped mine-clearance lines amid gunfire and chaos. She is the only woman and the first journalist to reach the beach and report back. Discovered the next morning, she is arrested but charms her way back to France with a Canadian regiment.

Months later, in a Paris restaurant, Ernest tells Martha he intends to marry the journalist Mary Welsh. Martha tells him to divorce her, says goodbye, and walks away. She stays in Europe, reporting on the liberation of Paris and the concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau. On VE Day, she watches Parisians celebrate, weeps, and sits down to write, resolving to reclaim her name, Gellhorn, as the one solid thing she has left. An author's note summarizes her subsequent 60-year career: five novels, 14 novellas, and relentless travel across the world's war zones. She never forgave Hemingway, refused to be seen as a footnote in his life, and took her own life in 1998 at the age of 89.