No Castles on Main Street by Stephanie Kraft

Subtitle: American Authors and Their Homes. I was inspired by this book because I realized how much my own environment influenced Stronghold. In one sense, that goes without saying. My writing teachers all said, "Write what you know about." But it's more than objects, setting, people and other living beings in our lives--it's how we absorb them. Both Rawlings and Hemingway, contemporaries, lived and wrote in Florida, had marital conflicts, worked for newspapers, were activists for causes they believed in. Their literary responses to their environment were different because they were different people, of course. In my opinion (and not being a scholar of either writer), I see Rawlings as writing from inside the life of plants, animals and people whereas Hemingway's writing, to me, is more observational. Their two homes appear to support this conclusion; Rawlings happily described her home with its "weather-worn shabbiness," adding, "I suppose that a millionaire. . .might stand off the elements and maintain a trim tidiness. . . ." A trim tidiness seems appropriate for Hemingway's Key West Spanish colonial mansion. And his writing.