Dear Papa: The Letters of Patrick and Ernest Hemingway

"Edited by Patrick's nephew Brendan Hemingway and grandson Adams, the letters reveal shared enthusiasms for fishing, hunting, African terrain, and rigorous adventure...As a father, Hemingway was doting, solicitous, and demanding...Some letters betray tensions that Patrick was eager to alleviate...'When I am acting stupid or disrespectful, please tell me and tell me plainly,' he wrote when he was 23...'I am not as talented or interesting as Mr."

"Ernest Hemingway emerges as a 'devoted family man and engaged father' in this intimate collection of three decades' worth of letters between Hemingway and his son Patrick...There's Hemingway's first letter to his son (then four years old) in which he describes a Wyoming hunting trip, a note with some fatherly advice on football, and dispatches from Patrick on studying, boredom, and homesickness while he was at boarding school...Hemingway's support of Patrick's changing career goals is touching, and while the letters easily capture the pair's close bond, the lack of annotation presents its share of problems; readers will have to parse their way through a jumble of family sobriquets, pets' names, and sporting banter...Hardcore Hemingway fans will appreciate this view of the writer as a father."