La provincia texana, una madre troppo amorevole, un padre balordo: è da questo retroterra che parte il protagonista, giramondo omosessuale, per conoscere se stesso, gli uomini e l'America. Il lungo viaggio attraverso il continente lo porta di città in città a incontrare ogni genere di disperato e di deviante, persone ai margini che tuttavia lo aiuteranno nella sua iniziazione alla vita.
In the fall of 1948, Ernest Hemingway made his first extended visit to Italy in thirty years. His reacquaintance with Venice, a city he loved, provided the inspiration for "Across the River and into the Trees, " the story of Richard Cantwell, a war-ravaged American colonel stationed in Italy at the close of the Second World War, and his love for a young Italian countess. A poignant, bittersweet homage to love that overpowers reason, to the resilience of the human spirit, and to the worldweary beauty and majesty of Venice, "Across the River and into the Trees" stands as Hemingway's statement of defiance in response to the great dehumanizing atrocities of the Second World War. Hemingway's last full-length novel published in his lifetime, it moved John O'Hara in "The New York Times Book Review" to call him "the most important author since Shakespeare."