Recently, at Ridley College, St. Catharines, Bruce Croxon of CBC’s Dragon’s Den was photographed with Hilary Caters.
Caters Design Group created our book cover.
It all started with the Cuban flag colours that Hilary didn’t really like so she morphed them into sepia tones.
The front cover text includes:
The opening lines of Mary’s story: “If leaving the original manuscript in Cuba was Ernest’s rejection of me, keeping the carbon copy was my revenge.”
Mary’s last words in the book are from “Exile’s Letter” of Ernest’s mentor, Ezra Pound:
And if you ask how I regret that parting?
It is like the flowers falling at Spring’s end,
confused, whirled in a tangle.
What is the use of talking! And there is no end of talking —
There is no end of things in the heart.

The reader does not fully realize the importance of this poem, of Mary’s keeping a copy of her manuscript, and of the elements of hatred and love in her marriage with Hemingway, until the end of the book. The handwritten story (manu-script) is one of the highlighted words, as if written in a darker ink.
The three words beginning with “re” are “rejected,” “revenge” and “regret,” words that summarize Mary’s feelings as well as the mood and the central actions of the novel.
Now for the back cover:
Elizabeth and Hilary deserve credit for capturing the tone of the book and laying out the text. Larry Williamson took the picture that so vividly captures our relationship. It was our daughter, Alexa Fraser, who explained the magic of the picture. Can you see the heart in it?
Now for the spine:
What’s the title supposed to mean? Well, we played with many ideas for the book’s title and chose this one because it evokes the sea that Hemingway loved as well as Donne’s “Meditation XVII” that begins, “No man is an island.” The Italian word for island is “isolo” which suggests the isolation he experienced in his final years as he was tormented by mental and physical pains as well as by FBI harassment that compounded his sense of rejection and loneliness.
What’s Hearth Publications? When you self-publish a number of books, as I have, it’s good to have a collective name. This one comes from a blessing I received from a native woman who was also a nun: “May your love for Wayne be the hearth at which others can warm themselves.”
Cheers and Blessings, Eleanor