Publisher's Synopsis
Two novels by Jackie Hemingway in one volume
Lady In Red Jack Hemingway was a writer his entire life. Growing up on the family farm he began writing short stories that he would make his sisters read.His family's long literary shadow casts dark and daunting across his writing career; filling him with constant self-doubt and uneasiness. Weary of writing books simply to meet contractual obligations, Jack longs to return to the writing of his youth; to write a story that emerges from the heart instead of the wallet.
While at a writer's festival in Liverpool, England, Jack meets Carol Moore, the owner of a book shop where Jack purchases a first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's, Tender Is The Night. The somewhat smug American author falls for Carole who hasn't the time for his playboy overtures towards her.
The vast distance between England and America does not afford their relationship much chance of success. Jack continues his dalliances at home until a crisis of death compels him to choose in which direction his life's journey will head. Unfulfilled emptiness in his personal and literary life or will he forsake the family masculinity for true love and self-identity; and will he be the Hemingway for a new generation?
Lady InsteadJack Hemingway returns in the sequel to the best-selling novel, Lady In Red.
Unable to reconcile the loss of family and unwilling to accept that he has fathered a child that could possibly grow up as dysfunctional as himself, Jack spirals into an abyss of depression and self-loathing.
Remnants from the war cause him physical pain while painful memories of it and a tortured youth cause him to lose his grip on reality and the present. On long walks alone on the family farm's pastureland he connects to his family's literary past as an unwelcome guest arrives.
Knowing that his gender identity issues lurk just beneath the surface, Jack fails to connect with her in a lasting way making him feel that there is nothing in his life worth living for.
Shame in how he feels living inside the wrong body in a society not yet ready to accept those beliefs, Jack is catapulted into his past, hoping to find something to cling to before his own portrait adorns the mantle of dead Hemingways.
Ultimately it is the unwelcome guest who forces the issue. Jack Hemingway must decide on a solution to a lifetime of pain and suffering. The easy way out will end his suffering...the hard way will take every ounce of courage he can muster and require him to seek out the one person he can trust who can help him decide.
