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Informationen zum Autor Asha Lemmie is the New York Times bestselling author of Fifty Words For Rain and The Wildest Sun. She holds a BA in English Literature from Boston College and is currently a graduate student at Columbia University. She resides in New York City but can frequently be found wandering. Asha writes historical fiction that focuses on bringing unique perspectives to life. Klappentext "When tragedy forces Delphine Auber, an aspiring writer on the cusp of adulthood, from her home in postwar Paris, she seizes the opportunity to embark on the journey she's long dreamed of: finding the father she has never known. But her quest--spanning from Paris to New York's Harlem, to Havana and Key West--is complicated by the fact that she believes him to be famed luminary Ernest Hemingway, a man just as elusive as he is iconic. She desperately yearns for his approval, as both a daughter and a writer, convinced that he holds the key to who she's truly meant to be. But what will happen if she's wrong, or if her real story falls outside the legend of her parentage that's revered all her life?"-- Leseprobe Chapter One Virgo Terrae Harlem, New York October 1945 When I was five years old, I learned how to roll my mother onto her side so that she would not choke on her own vomit. I learned how to press a cool, damp rag against her flushed cheeks and coax her to drink some water. I learned that a little chilled white wine could bring her down gently, not the terrifying crash that would leave her shaking and writhing on the floor. At nine I could make a perfect dry martini, and I was always so pleased to see Maman's eyes light up. If I waited until the right mood struck her, she would let me sit between her legs, and she would braid my hair and sing. If I begged, she would laugh like a little tinkling bell and tell me stories about when she was young and one of the most promising young socialites in all of France. She was friends with anyone important, and she wanted to be a famous poet whose words would make her immortal. Her parents wanted her to marry well, and God knows she could have-her creamy complexion, thick auburn ringlets, trim figure, and luminous blue eyes were a painter's dream-but she had her head turned by an American writer, and he was her savior and her doom. I know the story by heart, I know it backwards and forwards. I know more about my mother's past than I do about myself. When Maman met Hemingway, she loved him instantly. She met him at a bar called the Dingo, where they were introduced by her favorite of the Americans who flocked to Paris twenty years ago, a writer she called "dearest Fitzy." For two years she was Papa's mistress, and he called her his tournesol, his sunflower. He called her poetry trite, and they had terrible rows, but she could refuse him nothing. He kept his promise to leave his wife, but he did not leave his wife for her. "I could have almost lived with it had he stayed with the dull one," she'd bemoan, her cheeks flushed, her eyes mournful. "After all, she was there first, and they had that adorable little boy. One could say she had a right to him. But to be abandoned for that awful drowning terrier . . . the shame of it. To have him turn from me and place a ring on the finger of that gaudy slut." She'd brush the invisible tears from her cheeks. "But at least I have you," she'd sigh. "Ma belle Delphine. Mon ange." I was born on the eleventh of January 1929. By the time I entered my mother's life, he had already left it-retreated back to America with his second wife. Louise told me that the drinking escalated when he left, and that the persistent melancholia set in after Maman's parents disowned her for falling pregnant. But I didn't need Louise to tell me that. It was something I've always known but never let myself dwell on. I was never one fo...
