"The Paris Wife"

In need of a new book to drown away my running sorrows, my girlfriend lent me, "The Paris Wife."

Set in the 1920's, the tale is based on the love affair and marriage of Hadley Richardson to Ernest Hemingway.

Quickly after they marry (he, 21 and she, 29), they set sail for Paris and become well known on the scene of the fabled "Lost Generation" which includes the likes of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

While pouring his heart into his writing, he regards Hadley or his "Hash" as his muse, his blood, his sustenance, his reason for living.  And she the same.  Until something scandalous occurs...you'll just have to read the novel.

Reading about Hemingway makes me long for another era and also makes me wonder whether I lived during another time.  I'm enamored by their Bohemian lifestyle, their intellectual, drunken parties, and their love of all things desperate, smart, and of the heart.

Who knows why we end up aligning with certain characters in a book or plot lines in a novel?  I think parts of our souls identify with times past and when we're engrossed in a character or an experience and our pulse quickens, we envision pieces of who we are on the page.  Long live the novel.