across the river and into the trees

A dying soldier seeks peace and meaning in postwar Venice, reflecting on love, war, and mortality in this elegiac, late-career novel.

Across the River and Into the Trees (1950) by Ernest Hemingway is a melancholic, introspective novel set in post–World War II Venice. It follows Colonel Richard Cantwell, a war-weary American officer facing his own mortality during a reflective weekend in Italy. As he spends time with a young Venetian countess named Renata, Cantwell revisits memories of war, lost love, and personal failure, attempting to find peace and dignity in the face of death.

Written in Hemingway’s later style—lyrical, impressionistic, and often elliptical—the novel explores themes of aging, romantic idealism, and emotional vulnerability. While it received mixed reviews upon release, with some critics finding it overly sentimental, others saw it as a poignant meditation on courage and loss. Across the River and Into the Trees captures the quiet reckoning of a man shaped by violence and love, and foreshadows the more profound introspection found in Hemingway’s final works.