Across the River and Into the Trees: A Lyrical Meditation on Love, War, and the Passage of Time

"Luck is a feast which doesn't stay in one place."

In the melancholy canals of post-war Venice, where the fading glow of twilight shimmers on the water, Colonel Richard Cantrell seeks refuge from a life defined by battle. Scarred by war, weighed down by a failing heart, and haunted by memories of a world that no longer exists, he drifts through the gilded decay of an ancient city, searching for something—perhaps redemption, perhaps love, perhaps simply a moment of peace.

In the radiant youth of Renata, a nineteen-year-old countess, he glimpses a fleeting chance at renewal. She is the embodiment of all he has lost, a vision of tenderness and beauty untouched by the ravages of war. Yet Cantrell is a soldier to his very core—his instincts, his movements, his very breath are dictated by the past. Can love truly heal a man whose soul still marches to the echoes of gunfire? Or is his longing for peace destined to be another battlefield he cannot survive?

In Hemingway’s most elegiac and intimate novel, Across the River and Into the Trees is a poignant exploration of the impermanence of youth, the weight of memory, and the quiet resignation of a man who knows that time waits for no one.