Papa and Fidel

It was Cuba, 1957. Ernest Hemingway, long a resident of Cuba, is past his prime, feeling old, and fighting the twin problems of liver disease and writer's block. Then he meets Fidel Castro, who, in the Sierra Maestra mountains, is building a growing force of idealistic young guerrillas who are determined to overthrow the corrupt, bloated regime of Generalissimo Fulgencio Batista. After Castro wins his revolution and takes power, he and Hemingway grow to respect and admire each other, and Hemingway helps Castro heal his relationship with his estranged son Fidelito, showing the boy how to throw a curve ball, something that eluded his father and kept him from pitching in the major leagues. Seamlessly blending real events and those that might have been, the novel climaxes when Papa Hemingway saves his friend from a CIA assassin's bullet. Helping Castro and Fidelito has revitalized him and given him the inspiration for a new novel, which he finishes back in his cabin in Ketchum, Idaho. But fate and the CIA assassin conspire to thwart him. The public will never know the truth about Hemingway's supposed suicide, or the last great novel the assassin destroyed. Like "Time After Time", this is a rousing novel that brings a famous author to vivid life in a great story of a memorable time.