Published posthumously in 1970, nine years after Hemingway’s suicide in 1961, Islands in the Stream is a novel of extraordinary depth and scope. Originally intended to encompass three stories to illustrate different stages in the life of its main characters, the three different parts were compiled into a single story. The story is told in three acts: “Bimini”, “Cuba”, and “At Sea”.

The three sections of this book, although all centering on the same main character, vary greatly in tone and emotion. The joy, the grief and the battle to continue are this man's journey and it works, even though the shifts feel abrupt and brutal. Even the joy at the beginning of the book is subsumed in a sense of impending doom. The book is not a "happy book" in any sense, but it is remarkably redemptive.