The Torrents of Spring Ernest Hemingway Hardcover Book

The Torrents of Spring is a novella written by Ernest Hemingway, published in 1926. Subtitled "A Romantic Novel in Honor of the Passing of a Great Race", Hemingway used the work as a spoof of the world of writers. It is Hemingway's first long work and was written as a parody of Sherwood Anderson's Dark Laughter.

et in northern Michigan, The Torrents of Spring concerns two men who work at a pump factory: World War I veteran Yogi Johnson, and writer Scripps O'Neill. Both are searching for the perfect woman, though they disagree over this ideal.

The story begins with O'Neill returning home from the library to find that his wife and small daughter have left him, explaining that "It takes a lot to mend the walls of fate." O'Neill, desperate for companionship, befriends a British waitress, Diana, at the restaurant where she works and immediately asks her to marry him.

Diana makes an attempt to impress her spouse by reading books from the lists of The New York Times Book Review, including many forgotten pot-boilers of the 1920s. But O'Neill soon leaves her (as she feared he would when she first met him) for another waitress, Mandy, who enthralls him with her store of literary (but possibly made up) anecdotes.