Sun and Sloppy Joe's

In 1928, Hemingway moved to Key West, Florida with second wife Pauline Pfeiffer, a stylish young socialite who he and his first wife had befriended in Paris before they divorced in 1927. In the lush yard of their Spanish Colonial home, Pauline kept a pool and peacocks while Hemingway staged boxing matches.

In June 1928, the couple welcomed their first son, Patrick. Six months later, they met with devastating news: Hemingway's father, depressed and in ailing health, committed suicide with a shotgun shortly before Christmas. Though grieving, Hemingway continued to write and managed to publish A Farewell To Arms. In 1931, he and Pauline had their second son, Gregory Hancock. Cut off from mainland Florida, working in quiet solitude, Hemingway churned out some of his best work.

The writer John Dos Passos recommended Key West to Hemingway because the remote island offered anonymity and plenty of deep-sea fishing to the now-famous author.

He also had several wild adventures. In a rain-splattered Key West street, he duked it out with Wallace Stevens after the poet had insulted him. In his beloved boat, Pilar, he battled man-sized fish (managing to shoot himself in both legs while trying to gaff one shark). Hemingway belted back drinks at Sloppy Joe's, a speakeasy that went legal after Prohibition ended. While at his favorite watering hole, he befriended a young journalist named Martha Gellhorn, who traveled with him to Spain to cover the civil war there. Eventually, she would become his third wife.