Hemingway, Hilary 1961(?)-

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HEMINGWAY, Hilary 1961(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1961, in FL; daughter of Leicester Hemingway; married Jeffry P. Lindsay; children: one daughter. Education: University of Miami, graduated 1984 (with honors). Hobbies and other interests: Volunteering for the American Diabetes Research Foundation.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Cape Coral, FL. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Rugged Land, LLC, 276, Canal St., Fifth Floor, New York, NY 10013.

CAREER:

Writer, television producer, and documentary filmmaker.

MEMBER:

American Diabetes Association (member of south coastal region board of directors).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Has won state and national awards for her unproduced screenplay "A Light within the Shadow."

WRITINGS:

(With Jeffry P. Lindsay) Dreamland: A Novel of the UFO Cover-Up, Forge (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Jeffry P. Lindsay) Dreamchild, Tom Doherty Associates (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Jeffry P. Lindsay) Hunting with Hemingway: Based on the Stories of Leicester Hemingway, Riverhead Books (New York, NY), 2000.

(With Carlene Brennen) Hemingway in Cuba, Rugged Land (New York, NY), 2003.

Also author of the Hemingway Florida Guidebook and an unproduced screenplay titled "A Light within the Shadow."

ADAPTATIONS:

Hunting with Hemingway was adapted for audiocassette, Highbridge, 2000, and narrated by the authors.

SIDELIGHTS:

Hilary Hemingway, who is the niece of famous author Ernest Hemingway, is the "family's best hope to carry on the literary line," noted a contributor for People magazine. Teaming up with her writer-husband, Jeffry P. Lindsay, she has penned two UFO/alien abduction thrillers, as well as a pair of books about aspects of her illustrious uncle's life.

In Dreamland: A Novel of the UFO Cover-Up and its 1998 sequel, Dreamchild, Hemingway blends detective novel and science fiction concepts. With Dreamland the author takes as a given that there was a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in the 1940s, and that the military is keeping aliens from that craft under close supervision. In the meantime, they are also creating a new super weapon as part of Project Joshua. Stanley Katz is involved in the project, and when his wife, Annie, who is pregnant once again after many miscarriages, mysteriously loses her unborn child, she and her husband begin to suspect alien abduction. The novel was greeted by Booklist contributor Emily Melton as "a sort of E.T. meets Darth Vader story," and was recommended for readers who "love a good sci-fi tale full of flying saucers and ripping good action." A contributor to Publishers Weekly, however, called the book a "lackluster thriller," whose "narrative suffers from a brittle superficiality." Booklist contributor Candace Smith commented that there is "loads of action" in this book, but that it "reads like a TV script" and has characters who "tend to be cookie-cutter."

Hemingway again collaborated with her husband with Hunting with Hemingway: Based on the Stories of Leicester Hemingway. This book is purported to be a partial transcript of fireside tales that Hemingway's father, Leicester—himself a writer—recorded on tape about his and his brother Ernest's hunting adventures. Such tall tales involve fighting cobras, tigers, bears, and even Nazis. But the book is also, as Carol Peace Robins noted in the New York Times Book Review, a "personal journey as [Hilary Hemingway] ponders her father's suicide." Like his brother and father before him, Leicester Hemingway committed suicide; in his case it was as a result of depression over the diabetes that would have led to the amputation of both his legs. Because of the complicated narrative structure in which the tapes are related to an English professor in search of Hemingway material and then in turn transcribed by the author and her husband, as well as their young daughter, Robins also commented that the book "lacks focus" because of the "excess of remarkers remarking [that] is cloyingly artificial." A contributor to Publishers Weekly was less encouraging, calling the book a disappointing narrative that seems "apocryphal"; and Library Journal contributor Michael Rogers felt that many of the anecdotes related are "so over the top that they should be regarded as fiction." However, reviewing the audiobook version, Booklist critic Karen Harris found it an "engaging blend of truth and family legend."

Teaming up with photographer Carlene Brennen, Hemingway mines more of her uncle's life and adventures in Hemingway in Cuba, a book that combines passages from Hemingway's eight novels written while he lived in Cuba with text providing insights into his daily life there, including his wives, lovers, passion for fishing, and anti-Nazi activities, until he was forced to leave with the advent of Castro's regime. Many reviewers praised the author's chapters dealing with more recent attempts by the Cuban authorities to establish a Hemingway research center at the author's former house, Finca Vigia. Janice Byrne, for example, wrote in the Hemingway Review that "perhaps the most important chapters in Hemingway in Cuba come at the end of the book where Hilary Hemingway reveals the status of Hemingway research in Cuba today." A Publishers Weekly critic, while noting that the text is "uneven," went on to praise the "gorgeous layout" with its generous use of sepia-tone photos, and concluded that "this volume earns its place on any Hemingway fan's shelf." Similarly, Newsday critic Spencer Rumsey said the book is "lavishly produced," and further noted that it "bring[s] to life an important period in the life of this man of letters, long overlooked because of the tensions between Castro's Cuba and the United States." Curtis Morgan, reviewing the title in the Miami Herald Online thought that "the book has an intimate feel," and that Hemingway "sprinkles similar passages from [Ernest Hemingway's] novels, and it's interesting to see how experience replayed in fiction—sometimes closely, sometimes cruelly or tenderly tweaked."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 15, 1995, Emily Melton, review of Dreamland: A Novel of the UFO Cover-Up, p. 1064; May 15, 1998, Candace Smith, review of Dreamchild, p. 1601; March 1, 2003, Karen Harris, review of Hemingway in Cuba (audiobook), p. 1295; May 15, 2003, Steve Paul, review of Hemingway in Cuba, p. 1632.

Diabetes Forecast, April, 1999, "Hilary Hemingway: Supporting Diabetes through the International Hemingway Festival," p. 89.

Hemingway Review, fall, 2003, Janice Byrne, review of Hemingway in Cuba, pp. 123-126.

Library Journal, July, 2000, Michael Rogers, review of Hunting with Hemingway: Based on the Stories of Leicester Hemingway, p. 91; May 15, 2003, Michael Rogers, review of Hemingway in Cuba, pp. 89-90.

Newsday, July 27, 2003, Spencer Rumsey, review of Hemingway in Cuba, p. E5.

New York Times Book Review, August 6, 2000, Carol Peace Robins, review of Hunting with Hemingway, p. 16.

People, July 22, 1985, "Hilary Hemingway May Be a Mariel Look-alike, but She's Out to Stake Her Claim on Papa's Turf," p. 79.

Publishers Weekly, January 23, 1995, review of Dreamland, p. 61; June 26, 2000, review of Hunting with Hemingway, p. 63; April 28, 2003, review of Hemingway in Cuba, p. 57.