> Skip to content
  • Published: 4 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9780451237880
  • Imprint: Berkley
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $32.99

Hemingway's Girl



From the bestselling author of The House of Hawthorne comes a historical fiction novel that gives life to the women behind novelist Ernest Hemingway in a “robust, tender story of love, grief, and survival on Key West in the 1930s.”*

In Depression-era Key West, Mariella Bennet, the daughter of an American fisherman and a Cuban woman, knows hunger. Her struggle to support her family following her father’s death leads her to a bar and bordello, where she bets on a risky boxing match...and attracts the interest of two men: world-famous writer, Ernest Hemingway, and Gavin Murray, one of the WWI veterans who are laboring to build the Overseas Highway.

When Mariella is hired as a maid by Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline, she enters a rarified world of lavish, celebrity-filled dinner parties and elaborate off-island excursions. As she becomes caught up in the tensions and excesses of the Hemingway household, the attentions of the larger-than-life writer become a dangerous temptation...even as straightforward Gavin Murray draws her back to what matters most.  Will she cross an invisible line with the volatile Hemingway, or find a way to claim her own dreams?  As a massive hurricane bears down on Key West, Mariella faces some harsh truths...and the possibility of losing everything she loves.

From the bestselling author of The House of Hawthorne comes a historical fiction novel that gives life to the women behind novelist Ernest Hemingway in a “robust, tender story of love, grief, and survival on Key West in the 1930s.”*

In Depression-era Key West, Mariella Bennet, the daughter of an American fisherman and a Cuban woman, knows hunger. Her struggle to support her family following her father’s death leads her to a bar and bordello, where she bets on a risky boxing match...and attracts the interest of two men: world-famous writer, Ernest Hemingway, and Gavin Murray, one of the WWI veterans who are laboring to build the Overseas Highway.

When Mariella is hired as a maid by Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline, she enters a rarified world of lavish, celebrity-filled dinner parties and elaborate off-island excursions. As she becomes caught up in the tensions and excesses of the Hemingway household, the attentions of the larger-than-life writer become a dangerous temptation...even as straightforward Gavin Murray draws her back to what matters most.  Will she cross an invisible line with the volatile Hemingway, or find a way to claim her own dreams?  As a massive hurricane bears down on Key West, Mariella faces some harsh truths...and the possibility of losing everything she loves.

  • Published: 4 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9780451237880
  • Imprint: Berkley
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Erika Robuck

ERIKA ROBUCK is a national bestselling author of novels Sisters of Night and Fog, The Invisible Woman, The House of Hawthorne, Fallen Beauty, Call Me Zelda, Hemingway's Girl, and Receive Me Falling. Erika was once named Annapolis’ Author of the Year, and she resides there with her husband, three sons, and a feisty miniature schnauzer.

Also by Erika Robuck

See all

Praise for Hemingway's Girl