In the fall of 1948, Ernest Hemingway and his fourth wife traveled for the first time to Venice. A year shy of his 50th birthday, Hemingway hadn't published a novel in nearly a decade when he met Adriana Ivancich, a striking Venetian girl just out of finishing school. Here Andrea di Robilant re-creates with sparkling clarity this surprising, years-long relationship, during which Hemingway used Adriana as the model for Renata in Across the River and into the Trees, and Adriana was with Papa in Cuba as he wrote The Old Man and the Sea. This intimate look at Hemingway's final years also takes an unflinching look at the cost to a young woman because of her association with a larger-than-life literary celebrity.