BY KAREN BOSSICK

Learn about Ernest Hemingway’s friendship with U.S. Army Gen. Buck Lanham this coming Thursday at Ketchum’s Community library.

Greer Rising and Eileen Martin, current Writers-in-Residence at the Hemingway House in Ketchum, will discuss private letters from Lanham to Rising’s family and what they tell us about Ernest Hemingway in a free presentation at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21, at The Community Library.

Seats may be reserved at https://thecommunitylibrary.libcal.com/event/13119700. The program also will be livestreamed and available to watch later at https://vimeo.com/event/4708223.

Major Gen. Charles Trueman Lanham, known as “Buck,” was a short story writer and magazine poet in his own right, as well as a decorated soldier with 14 decorations in his career.

Lanham, who many consider to be Hemingway’s best friend, met Hemingway on the battlefields of Normandy during World War II, and the two men remained friends until Hemingway’s death in 1961. They wrote each other at least twice a month for 17 years, often sharing coded references.

Letters Lanham sent to the Rising family show Hemingway and Lanham to be intellectual equals who discussed love, war and literature. Lanham influenced Hemingway’s writing, with Hemingway modeling the protagonist Col. Cantwell in his novel “Across the River and into the Trees” after Lanham.

Hemingway also borrowed from Lanham’s volatile marriage for his novel “The Garden of Eden,” published posthumously in 1986. Hemingway mentioned Lanham and related battlefield anecdotes from his time with Lanham’s unit, which included Lanham’s break through the Siegfried Line near Buchet, in two posthumously-published short stories.

Lanham also led a break out in the Battle of the Bulge after surviving the bloody Battle of Hurtgen Forest.

Hemingway described Lanham as “the finest and bravest and most intelligent military commander I have known.”

Rising and Martin also discovered an unpublished Hemingway war poem, written when the two men were together. They will share that poem and what it reveals about Hemingway’s craft on Thursday.