The author first lays out some interesting history of the railroad, and eventually, the highway that ran parallel to that railroad, down the center of the Keys all the way to Key West. He also set the stage for the injustices placed on the Veterans of WWI by our own government, a bonus which was promised to each one for signing up for the war, but was never given out. These were the men who would be hired to build this new highway, and this would also get them off President Franklin Roosevelt’s (FDR) hands about the money he owed them.

This hurricane was the first Category 5 hurricane of the 20th century, known by the islanders as the Great Hurricane, or the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane by the National Weather Service. This author calls it “Hemmingway’s Hurricane” because….why?

They approximate that of the 405 people lost, 245 were veterans left behind on the island. They would like to blame someone, but it appears the lack of communication was the culprit. If I had to point a finger at anyone, it would be Fred Ghent, the man who headed over all the Veteran Camps in the US. The biggest rumor that spread was that Ghent didn’t want to pay the railroad company $300 to send the rescue train down to the Keys to pick up the men and they argued all morning long until finally they came to a resolution and the train was readied and sent out around 5:30pm the evening of the storm. A little too late! The winds were already at 60 mph, and picking up speed, and the roads and tracks were flooded. But, the train did make it down to the camps, it just didn’t make it back up. There was a lot of secrecy and suspicion around the government and what happened here.

The author collected many written stories from testimonies from the men who survived out in the storm while waiting on that train, and there are some interesting photos of the island ravished to pieces with a few pictures of the dead bodies.

Ernest Hemmingway was barely even mentioned in this book. I find it a pretty far stretch to call this “Hemmingway’s Hurricane”. Yes! He lived on the island (which his house still exists today and is open for tours), and yes, he tied up his yacht, PILAR, in a submarine cage in the Navy Yard and rode out the storm safely on the yacht. The winds down at Key West only reached about 45-50 mph, while the brunt of the storm hit the middle of the keys, the 15-foot storm surge and winds upward of 200-225 mph, laid waste to Upper and Lower Matecumbe Key where Veteran Camps 1, 3, and 5 were located.

After the storm, he and a couple of other men rode the yacht around the keys to access the damage and found dead people all over, hanging naked from trees, in the brush, peppered all over the ground. He did recognize a few because he was a WWI Veteran, himself and used to go to the taverns in the Keys and drink and talk war stories with them. Like most of the men of WWI, he may have experienced a bit of PTSD, which didn’t have a name back then. He was an alcoholic, and eventually went psychotic and committed suicide…but that wasn’t until 1961 while in Ketchum, Idaho. He suffered from depression and numerous physical declining conditions. This book suggests that he was a communist and believed he was being followed by the FBI because of his stance against the government’s carelessness regarding these Veterans. He sure was a good looking man. I’ll have to find a good biography where research was actually done about him and read it one day. ( )

Good telling of a bad story. Most of the dead were victims because the gov't sent them and left them without support. They were used as photo ops by the FDR administration and their fate buried and whitewashed by the same. Hemingway's outspoken defense of these men is his connection to it all, he was in fact not really affected directly by the storm. A worthwhile read. ( )

This is a dramatic tale -- a Category 5 hurricane hits with very little warning and a rescue train sent too late to help World War I veterans working on a New Deal project in the Keys. Scott's obviously done a lot of good research and has the structure of a good story, but sometimes gets in his own way telling it. And calling it "Hemingway's Hurricane" is a bit of a stretch -- Hemingway was in Key West, 80 miles away, during the storm and didn't feel much of its effects. He did go up to help afterwards and wrote an impassioned piece about it for the left-leaning New Masses. But calling it his storm feels a bit too close to name-dropping. ( )