Famed writer Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) had just returned from a trip to Bermuda when one of his beloved daughters, Jean, died suddenly after having a heart attack in the bathtub. It was just before Christmas 1909 and the grieving Mark Twain turned right around and came back to Bermuda to grieve in peace.

?You go to heaven if you want,? Mark Twain wrote on what would be his last visit to Bermuda, ?I?d druther stay here.?

A new book by an American writer, Donald Hoffmann captures the special relationship that Mark Twain had with turn of the century Bermuda. ?Mark Twain In Paradise ? His Voyages to Bermuda? was released by the University of Missouri Press earlier this year.

It is part of a series called Mark Twain and His Circle. It is one of the first books ever written that focuses solely on the Bermuda aspect of Mark Twain?s life.

The Bookworm Beat recently sat down with Mr. Hoffmann who was on the island visiting his son Michael, who works in a local insurance company.

?I became interested in this entirely because of Michael,? said Mr. Hoffmann who lives in Kansas City, Missouri, not far from Mark Twain?s birthplace in Florida, Missouri. ?It is coming up to nine years that he has been here, so I have been to Bermuda about ten times.?

On Mr. Hoffmann?s first visit to Bermuda, his son took him to the old Palmetto Bay Hotel in Flatts and casually mentioned that Mark Twain had once visited Bermuda. Mr. Hoffmann?s curiosity was piqued.

?It struck me as kind of odd because I didn?t know anything about Mark Twain and I didn?t know anything about Bermuda,? said Mr. Hoffmann. ?I wouldn?t have put the two together. I didn?t do anything right away, but I got to thinking more about it.

?I thought there must be a short book about what Mark Twain was doing down here. He was immensely popular in the US and other places as well.?

Mr. Hoffmann was surprised to find that there wasn?t specifically anything about Mr. Twain?s time in Bermuda locally or elsewhere.

?The real storehouse of information are the Mark Twain Papers at the University of California at Berkeley,? said Mr. Hoffmann. ?It is just a huge archive. I think they started collecting letters written by Mark Twain maybe in the 1960s.

?The director up there said they started with 5,000 letters and now they are up to 11,000. Those letters are so colourful and beautifully written.?

Also in the California archive is a typescript of what Mark Twain intended to be his autobiography, but only parts of it have been published.

?It wasn?t too hard to find out what he had said about Bermuda,? said Mr. Hoffmann. ?Twain said lots of good things about Bermuda, and wrote lots of letters about Bermuda.?

Mark Twain visited Bermuda a total of eight times. The first visit was at the end of a long cruise to the Holy Land where the schedule included a stop ?with our friends, the Bermudians? on the way back to the United States.

Much of Mr. Twain?s writing about Bermuda was published in magazines.

In one issue of the Atlantic Monthly he wrote, ?We never met a man, or woman, or child anywhere in this sunny island who seemed to be unprosperous, or discontented, or sorry about anything. The spectacle of an entire nation grovelling in contentment is an infuriating thing.?

When Mr. Hoffmann first began researching Mark Twain?s life, the only thing he?d actually read written by Mark Twain was Huckleberry Finn.

?I grew up in Springfield, Illinois,? said Mr. Hoffmann. ?Growing up I had heard about how Mark Twain wrote about going down the Mississippi river on a raft. Me and some buddies got a canoe and went about 20 miles on the Sangamon River. The Sangamon is a bit bigger than a creek, but nothing like the Mississippi.?

To rectify his own ignorance, Mr. Hoffmann bought a complete set of Mark Twain?s work in 29 volumes. Of that set, he would only say: ?It took a long time to get through 28 volumes.?

A great deal of Mr. Twain?s work was actually published posthumously, because of its brutal honesty.

?His reputation was a humorist, but a lot of his later work was quite bitter,? said Mr. Hoffmann. ?A lot of good things came out real late. Huckleberry Finn is clearly his masterpiece.

?I liked The Prince and the Pauper. I didn?t particularly liked A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur?s Court because he had been political ideas in there that muddied that up.

?The Mysterious Stranger: And Other Stories which wasn?t published until 1916 ? six years after Twain?s death ? is very interesting. It is a fantasy tale set in the middle ages. The Mysterious Stranger is very tough.?

In Bermuda, Mr. Hoffmann visited the National Library and the archives, but he also had a look at landmarks mentioned in Mr. Twain?s letters and articles.

?I had to do a lot of research in Bermuda just to learn what Mark Twain was talking about,? said Mr. Hoffmann. ?The fun part was to track down his references. Sometimes this was easier said then done.

?The big Indian rubber tree mentioned by Mr. Twain stands in front of the Bermuda National Library and has a plaque on it that mentions Twain. Finding a mahogany tree that Mr. Twain favoured was a little more tricky.

?I knew it was in Flatts,? said Mr. Hoffmann. ?I asked around the Aquarium, but no one seemed to know where it was. Finally, a naturalist at the Aquarium directed me to Harrington Sound.

?There is no plaque on it. Twain also wrote about Spanish Point. I went out there and tourists would drive out to the Spanish Point Boatclub and then turn around and drive out again.

?I took the time to walk out on the point and it was very nice. There should be something out there telling tourists about the connection with Mark Twain.?

Mr. Hoffmann is a retired journalist. Mark Twain in Paradise is his eleventh book. He has also written several books about architecture including Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan and the Skyscraper and Frank Lloyd Wright?s House on Kentuck Knob.