ERNEST HEMINGWAY'S brother weaves together a fantastic tale of animal magic about the two men and their globe-trotting exploits in a new account written by another member of their family on their shared passion for hunting. The author's niece, Hilary Hemingway, and her husband Jeffry Lindsay, wrote the book based on a tape left by her father and Ernest's younger brother, Leicester, to her mother. Hilary's father was also a writer and, despite being 16 years younger, accompanied Ernest - whom he called 'Papa' - on many of his trips. Like his famous sibling, Leicester committed suicide, leaving among his possessions a tape of conversations that he had with friends about his adventures. For Hilary, the contents of the tape - bequeathed to her when her mother died in 1997 - were a cathartic experience. Nearly 15 years had passed since her adored father had taken his life and the tape finally allowed her to unlock the grief that had consumed her life. She knew he was a near-fearless man yet she resented that he had seemingly taken the coward's way out, which she refers to as the 'family exit' because her paternal grandfather had ended his life. Facing a double amputation due to diabetes, Leicester had shot himself. After listening to the tape with her family, Hilary understood that having lived life to the full, he was unable to bear the thought of any sacrifice in its quality. She says: 'For the first time, I could really mourn my father. She [Mum] had left the tape knowing I would listen to it, and knowing how I would feel when I did. It was Mum's final gift to me. She had given me back my father.' The beauty of this book is that puts into context much of what Hemingway wrote in his novels. For example, Hemingway wrote The Green Hill Of Africa in 1935, a story of a safari in East Africa. And in Hunting With Hemingway, we are privy to hunting crocodiles with the two men on the Zambezi River, as they try to outwit the crocodile birds that give warning to the beasts of impending trouble. In a daring bid to outmanoeuvre the birds, they track a crocodile at night, and to their success, Leicester - nicknamed Baron by his elder brother - shoots a crocodile, but not before it rears up and sends the boy flying. 'He nearly had you, Baron. We were close to being eaten,' Ernest apparently says. Another tale has the pair surrounded by baboons on an escarpment in Sudan - and again Ernest rides to the rescue, as he does when the pair venture to India to track tigers and cobras. The impression is that Ernest is always a stone's throw away to avoid disaster, and viewed by Leicester as the hero. One story very nearly did turn to disaster when the two brothers travelled to Indonesia in search of the Komodo dragon - the renowned lizards that grow to 4.5 metres long. Before either man has a chance to kill the dragon, it bites Leicester on the foot and hours later the wound starts to turn gangrenous. After bleeding the foot, Ernest calls in a local 'doctor' to avoid having Leicester's foot amputated. In his 'medicine' bag are hundreds of maggots which he throws on the wound. Apparently, within hours they eat the dead flesh and prevent the gangrene from spreading. Of course, this is a book that would be difficult to verify, being based on just one man's version - that of Leicester. Both Hilary - and Leicester on the tape - admit that the boundary is blurred between fact and fiction in these stories - a Hemingway quality. More than anything, perhaps the book reinforces the widely held belief that Ernest was a multi-faceted man, as at home in the wilds of Africa or Asia as he was with the written and spoken word. What makes the account most likable is that there appears to be none of the sibling rivalry that can tear apart such relationships, especially when both were writers and one was so much more successful than the other. Hunting With Hemingway by Hilary Hemingway and Jeffry P. Lindsay Riverhead Books $230