copyright 1937; P.F. Collier & Son Corporation publishers, New York; hardbound; very good condition with unmarked pages; no dust jacket.
description -
To Have and Have Not is a novel by Ernest Hemingway (publ. 1937) about Harry Morgan, a fishing boat captain out of Key West, Florida. The novel depicts Harry as an ordinary working man of the Depression Era, forced by dire economic forces into the black-market activity of running contraband between Cuba and Florida. A wealthy fishing charter customer (one of the "Have's") bilks Harry by slipping away without paying after a three-week fishing trip, leaving Harry destitute. Stuck in Havana and motivated by the need to support his family, Harry then himself turns to crime. He makes a fateful decision to swindle would-be Chinese immigrants seeking passage into Florida from Cuba. Instead of transporting them as agreed, he murders the Chinese middle-man and puts the men ashore in Cuba.
Harry begins to ferry different types of illegal cargo between the two countries, including alcohol and Cuban revolutionaries. These events alternate with chapters that describe the dissolute lives of wealthy yacht owners. The Great Depression features prominently in the novel, forcing depravity and hunger on the poor residents of Key West (the "Have Not's") who are referred to locally as "Conchs". The racism of the era runs through the novel in the language used by Harry and the other white Americans towards other races.