Ernest Hemingway published Across the River and Into the Trees (1950) after a decade during which he had published no new fiction. His only book between For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and Across the River and Into the Trees was Men at War (1942), an anthology of war stories. Deriving its title from the last words of US Civil War General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson, Across the River and Into the Trees tells the story of the last days of Colonel Richard Cantwell, who has survived two world wars only to die of natural causes.

Hemingway had struggled during the 1940s to get back into the writing of fiction after his traumatic service as a war correspondent during Wolrd War II. Returning to Cuba,

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Published 30 June 2002

Citation: Fleming, Robert E.. "Across the River and Into the Trees". The Literary Encyclopedia. 30 June 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6859, accessed 20 November 2009.]