Hemingway's Daughter

It’s 1950 and Finn Hemingway, fictional daughter of Ernest and Hadley Hemingway, is as low as it gets.

She just graduated at the top of her NYU law school class, burning to work as a trial lawyer, but instead, she’s typing at an ad agency because law firms cheerfully and unapologetically always hire a man who is 500th in his class from a no-name law school over a top-notch woman. Doors slam before Finn has the chance to show she can handily spin opposing counsel’s case on its head and demolish his star witness in four questions. Crushed, Finn seethes, knowing her dream of being a female Clarence Darrow is almost out of reach solely because of her sex.

Then, haunted by Zelda Fitzgerald’s matter-of-fact pronouncement that Finn will never inspire poetry or grand passion—too tall, jaw too strong, Hemingway eyes, all quite pitiable actually, per Zelda—she’s certain there will never be a Mr. Darcy for her. When added to Finn’s close-up view of her father’s disastrous entanglements and their rubble, she mourns that love always ends for the Hemingways, and usually, it ends badly. Her romantic yearning now feels almost foolish.

Finally, there’s her father himself. While loved, she aches to be valued beyond biological necessity by her charismatic but inconstant father who’s 100% reliable, 60% of the time but who makes being in his shadow feel more electrifying than sharing the limelight with anyone else. Still Finn can never be significant to him without impacting the love of his life: his writing. And without story-telling talents, she has almost nothing to offer.

It's the “almost” of each dream that keeps her going.

At the age of 25, Finn dreads that she’ll never pound the table while cross-examining a hostile witness or thrill to a legendary love with a swoon-worthy fellow equestrian, or be witty enough literarily to hold the focus of her mercurial, loving, maddening, often drunk, at times repulsive, scenery-chewing, generous, smart, funny, obnoxious, center-of-her-soul father.

Hemingway had three sons but always longed for a daughter. This is her story.