Across the River and Into the Trees

Ernest Hemingway

Jul 2002 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

Now a major motion picture starring Liev Schreiber and Josh Hutcherson!

A poignant post-WWII tale of a revitalizing love found too late that follows the fleeting connection between an Italian countess and an injured, aging American colonel in Italy—a love story that inspires light and hope, while only darkness lies ahead.

In the fall of 1948, Ernest Hemingway made his first extended visit to Italy in thirty years. His reacquaintance with Venice, a city he loved, provided the inspiration for Across the River and into the Trees, the story of Richard Cantwell, a war-ravaged American colonel stationed in Italy at the close of the Second World War, and his love for a young Italian countess.

A bittersweet homage to love that overpowers reason, to the resilience of the human spirit, and to the world-weary beauty and majesty of Venice, Across the River and into the Trees stands as Hemingway’s melanchoic yet resolute statement of defiance in response to the great dehumanizing atrocities of the Second World War.

About the author

Ernest Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer of his time. Publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established Hemingway as one of the greatest literary lights of the twentieth century. His classic novel The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. His life and accomplishments are explored in-depth in the PBS documentary film from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Hemingway. Known for his larger-than-life personality and his passions for bullfighting, fishing, and big-game hunting, he died in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961.