“A part of American literary history, and his fans must read it, as they read all the rest with varying degrees of emotion, exhilaration and just plain joy.”
“An immensely touching book.”
“I fell in love with the book at first sight … caught up by the Hemingway voice (never truer nor more relaxed) … A lovely, loving work, deeply sad and deeply felt.”
“As haunting as any fiction that Hemingway ever wrote.”
“The work of an estimable writer … Hemingway’s voice is still effective, hauntingly so.”
ISLANDS IN THE STREAM
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
A NATIONAL GENERAL COMPANY
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
ISLANDS IN THE STREAM
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Charles Scribner, Jr. and I worked together preparing this book for publication from Ernest’s original manuscript. Beyond the routine chores of correcting spelling and punctuation, we made some cuts in the manuscript, I feeling that Ernest would surely have made them himself. The book is all Ernest’s. We have added nothing to it.
MARY HEMINGWAY
The house was built on the highest part of the narrow tongue of land between the harbor and the open sea. It had lasted through three hurricanes and it was built solid as a ship. It was shaded by tall coconut palms that were bent by the trade wind and on the ocean side you could walk out of the door and down the bluff across the white sand and into the Gulf Stream. The water of the Stream was usually a dark blue when you looked out at it when there was no wind. But when you walked out into it there was just the green light of the water over that floury white sand and you could see the shadow of any big fish a long time before he could ever come in close to the beach.