Marianne K. Miller's cinematic novel evokes a young Hemingway's pivotal time in Toronto

In her leanly written debut, Miller dramatizes the pivotal months Ernest Hemingway spent in Canada as a reporter for the Toronto Star, imagining how he develops an affinity and quiet admiration for an infamous bank robber, Norman “Red” Ryan, who’s on the lam after a daring prison break from the Kingston Pen.

In 1923, Hemingway and his wife, Hadley, relocate from Paris to Toronto to await the birth of their first child, a move that encompasses multiple regrets on his part. Feeling trapped into impending fatherhood and in a career with a controlling boss who doesn’t allow him a byline, he gets frustratingly bogged down with routine assignments and nonstop travel when he’d much rather be investigating Red’s more exciting trail and developing his own fiction-writing craft.

For his part, Red, reveling in his liberty, makes his way from the piney woods near Toronto to various points across the northern United States, holding up banks and accumulating enough wealth to fund an increasingly lavish lifestyle. The leader of his band of outlaws, Red aims to keep their goal focused while his most loyal sidekick, Arthur “Sully” Sullivan, gets distracted by pretty ladies.

Miller’s writing effectively combines the flawed heroes and unsentimental settings of hard-boiled crime fiction with an economical style that creates bold, memorable images of both men and their parallel journeys. Hemingway follows Red’s exploits from afar, researching the background to his case with a librarian’s invaluable help while growing confident in his pursuit of creative freedom whenever his path and Red’s unexpectedly cross.

With slangy dialogue and vivid scenes of the raucous 1920s that pop from the page, We Were the Bullfighters makes for a stirring portrait of a young man’s incessant hunger to fulfill his artistic vision.

Marianne K. Miller's We Were the Bullfighters was published by Dundurn Press, itself based in Toronto, this past May.  I reviewed it from NetGalley for August's Historical Novels Review. Before reading the novel's synopsis, I hadn't been aware of Hemingway's time in Canada, and the circumstances are so intriguing it's not surprising an author decided to make a novel out of it.  Miller is a Hemingway scholar to boot. Her novel should appeal to readers who enjoy hard-boiled crime, those who read literary fiction, and anyone interested in this significant period of a major American writer's life.