January. In spite of his injuries, Hemingway joined Patrick and his wife on a planned fishing trip in February, but he was irascible and difficult to get along with. When a bushfire broke out, Hemingway fell into the fire while helping extinguish the flames, burning himself on his legs, front torso, lips, left hand and right forearm. Months later in Venice, Hemingway was diagnosed with two cracked discs, a kidney and liver rupture, a dislocated shoulder and a broken skull. As soon as Hemingway returned to Finca Vigía in Cuba, he began work on a book about the safari, wanting to write while it was still vivid in his memory. He quickly wrote 10,000 words, despite his pain (eventually the manuscript grew to about 800 pages). In September 1954, Hemingway wrote in a letter, "At present I work at about 1/2 the capacity I should but everything is better all the time." However, three months later in late December he wrote in a letter: "This has been sort of a rough year .... We call this 'black-ass' and one should never have it. But I get tired of pain sometimes, even if that is an ignoble feeling." Almost a year later in October 1955, he declared: "Am passed 650 pages in the book. Am trying to write now like a good sorcer's (sic) apprentice ... always start to write as an apprentice. By the end of the book you are a master but if you commence as master in writing anyway, you end as a bloody bore." Two months later, Hemingway was bedridden with kidney disease. By January 1956, he acknowledged, in a letter written on the second anniversary of the accidents, he was having trouble remembering the trip. In 1956, Hemingway agreed to work on the filming of The Old Man and the Sea and abandoned work on the Africa book. He wrote to his editor, "I found it impossible to resume writing on the Africa book." Hemingway put the manuscript in a safe-deposit box in Havana, although after the 1959 Cuban revolution he feared the manuscript lost. Synopsis The book is set in mid-20th century Kenya Colony during the Mau-Mau rebellion. In his introduction to True at First Light, Patrick Hemingway describes the Kikuyu and Kamba tribes at the time of the Mau-Mau rebellion. He explains that if the Kamba had joined the rebellion, Ernest and Mary Hemingway