A few months after Ernest Hemingway and his wife survived two plane crashes in two days while on safari in Africa, he wrote a letter to his lawyer full of grisly details about his injuries — with the bravado that marked both his novels and his life. Now, that letter has drawn 12 bids at auction and ultimately sold for $237,055.
Hemingway wrote the letter in April 1954. At the time, he explained to his attorney, Alfred Rice, why he'd asked others to "give you the word" on his injuries from the crashes a few months earlier, in January.
