The thrilling story of friends Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos in the Spanish Civil War, an ideological adventure that brought their friendship - and their literary rivalry - to the breaking point The Spanish Civil War was a flashpoint for many artists of the era, and the political left's romance with its cause led many creative luminaries to Spain. Perhaps the most notable of these was Ernest Hemingway. Another important writer to make the trip was John Dos Passos, widely regarded at the time as the literary voice of America's new socially engaged generation. Dos Passos and Hemingway had long been companions, and it is likely that mild-mannered "Dos" was oblivious to Hemingway's obsessive resentment of him. Regardless, the two men arrived in Spain as comrades of a sort. In The Breaking Point, Stephen Koch reveals that both Hemingway and Dos were in Spain as part of a group sponsored by Stalin's propaganda ministry. Shortly after their arrival, Dos's close friend Jose Robles Pazo was killed as a purported fascist spy. Dos could never accept Robles's guilt, putting him at odds with Hemingway and placing his politics (and literary reputation) into question.
Dos's career never fully recovered. Both a biographical portrait and history-in-miniature, The Breaking Point explores the time the two men shared in Spain, and how it affected each man, his work, and American literature as a whole.