Novelist Paula McLain just sold a novel about the life of Ernest Hemingway‘s first wife, reportedly landing a half-million dollar deal.

According to the NY Observer, Random House executive editor Susanna Porter bought the historical novel about the relationship between Hadley Richardson and Hemingway (pictured via, circa World War I). Agent Julie Barer sealed the deal.

The article explains how the book follows “the five-year period after World War I during which Richardson and Hemingway, who was in his 20s, were married and living as expats in Paris alongside Lost Generation writers like Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson.”