I’ve just finished my third reading of True at First Light, published in 1999. It is described as a “fictionalized memoir,” and my recent reading opened up my understanding of the book in startling ways. In significant ways it is a precursor to A Moveable Feast and an eerie foreshadowing of what was to unfold in Hemingway’s actual life: that is the serious injuries that he suffered in a real-life plane crash at the end of the trip to Africa, which gave him the material for this book. It is so revealing. He paints indelible portraits of two women, “Mary,” the name of his actual wife, and “Debba,” his fictionalized African “wife.” There is a great deal about literature, well-known writers, and a section about Paris that even includes the phrase “A Moveable Feast.”