DEAR PAPA

Intimate and illuminating, this is the story of Ernest Hemingway's relationship with his son Patrick through a selection of letters they exchanged over 20+ years.

In the public imagination, Ernest Hemingway looms larger than life. But the actual person behind the legend has long remained elusive. Now, his son Patrick shares the letters they exchanged over two decades, offering a glimpse into how the great writer interacted with his children.

Edited and with an introduction by Hemingway's grandson Brendan Hemingway, featuring a foreword and epilogue by Patrick reflecting on their relationship and his father's legacy, Dear Papa is a family project and an intimate portrait of a father and son.


Patrick Hemingway is the middle child of Ernest's three sons. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1928, he grew up in Key West, Florida. He graduated from Harvard University and pursued a career as a professional hunter in Tanzania, Africa, and later became an instructor at The College of African Wildlife Management Mweka. There he served as a Forest Officer Wildlife seconded from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN (FAO). He retired to Bozeman, Montana, where he lives with his wife and family.

Ernest Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer of his time. Publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established Hemingway as one of the greatest literary lights of the twentieth century. His classic novel The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. His life and accomplishments are explored in-depth in the PBS documentary film from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Hemingway. Known for his larger-than-life personality and his passions for bullfighting, fishing, and big-game hunting, he died in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961.