Days before he died, Earnest Hemingway gifted a signed book to a Mayo nurse. Now it's headed to a museum

ROCHESTER — In 1961, Ernest Hemingway, then considered the world’s most famous author, came to Mayo Clinic for treatment for depression. It would form the last, ultimately tragic, chapter of his adventurous life.

Six days after being discharged from Saint Marys Hospital, Hemingway killed himself with a shotgun at his Idaho home.

On Monday, Nov. 24, in a ceremony reminiscent of a sacred object changing hands, a signed edition of Hemingway’s book, “The Old Man and the Sea” — one that he inscribed during his stay in Rochester and believed to contain among his last written words — was presented to a Hemingway scholar at an event hosted by the Sisters of St. Francis at Assisi Heights.

“The Old Man and the Sea” earned Hemingway both a Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel Prize in Literature. The schola