Published in 2023
336 pages
Asha Lemmie is the New York Times bestselling author of Fifty Words For Rain and The Wildest Sun. She holds a BA in English Literature from Boston College and is currently a graduate student at Columbia University. She resides in New York City but can frequently be found wandering. Asha writes historical fiction that focuses on bringing unique perspectives to life.
What is this book about?
Following her New York Times bestselling debut Fifty Words for Rain, Asha Lemmie’s next sweeping and evocative novel follows a young woman escaping her past in postwar Paris as she searches for the larger-than-life man she believes to be her father.
When tragedy sends Delphine Auber, an aspiring writer on the cusp of adulthood, from her home in Paris, she seizes the opportunity to embark on the journey she’s long dreamed finding the father she has never known. But her quest is complicated by the fact that she believes her father to be a famed literary icon, Ernest Hemingway, a man just as elusive as he is iconic. She desperately yearns for his approval, as both a daughter and a writer, convinced that he holds the answer to who she’s truly meant to be. But what will happen if she is wrong, or if her real story falls outside of the legend of her parentage that she’s revered all her life?
The answer takes her from Paris to New York’s Harlem, to Havana and Key West, as Delphine fights to find her own triumphant place in the world and within herself, outside of the shadow of the myths she’s forged so strongly into her identity. Epically rendered as only Asha Lemmie’s vivid and lyrical voice can, The Wildest Sun is a dazzling and unexpected coming-of-age story about an unforgettable young woman who must come to terms with who she is and who she wants to be.