Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos were friends; writers-in-arms, though they were polar opposites in terms of personality - Dos Passos' calm contrasting with Hemingway's machismo. They arrived in Spain during the civil war as comrades, but when Dos Passos undertook to unravel the mystery of the disappearance of his friend, Jose Robles - a Spanish-born Johns Hopkins profressor who had moved back to Spain to help save the Spanish Republic - their friendship, and Dos Passos' literary career, reached the breaking point.

In this stunning historical narrative, written with a novelists eye for detail, acclaimed writer Stephen Koch explores the relationship between the two men - set against the grippingly dramatic backdrop of the Spanish Civil War - and how their split changed them both as men and as writers.