A conversation with Darla Worden about Cockeyed Happy...Part 2

Darla Worden is the Editor-in-Chief of Mountain Living magazine and Colorado Homes & Lifestyles magazine. She joins us to talk about Cockeyed Happy, her book about Ernest Hemingway’s summers in Wyoming with his second wife, Pauline.

This story is not well known. I mean…we can picture Hemingway in Paris. Fishing in Key West. Drinking rum at his favorite bar (The Floridita) in Havana. But…Wyoming?

From the book jacket: “In March 1928, after the phenomenal success of The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway returned to the U.S. with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer—the stylish Vogue editor and scorned “other woman” who would give up everything to be with him and in the end, lose it all. The couple left Paris in the wake of the gossip storm about Hemingway’s affair and abandonment of his first wife and son. Escaping to Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains to write…he finished A Farewell to Arms and fell in love with the land around him.”

They were “cockeyed happy”…until they weren’t. Hemingway went on to have two more wives after Pauline.

Darla has been fascinated by Hemingway since she was a teen in Sheridan, Wyoming. She saw his photo above the jukebox at The Last Chance Bar and was captivated.

She tells us about some of his favorite haunts in Paris. And about the Left Bank Writers Retreats she organizes (held annually in June). Eight writers spend a week immersed in Hemingway’s Paris. She calls it: “Part writers’ workshop; part tour of Paris.”

www.darlaworden.com

 

www.leftbankwriters.com

 

Here’s the NYT article about the signed Hemingway book:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/arts/hemingway-book-nobel-sister-immaculata.html