Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on 21 July, 1899, the first son of Clarence and Grace Hall Hemingway and the second of their six children. Clarence Hemingway was a medical doctor with a small practice in Oak Park, Illinois; his wife was a music teacher with an active interest in church affairs and Christian Science. As a boy, Hemingway seemed to enjoy the best of both worlds. He grew up close to metropolitan center in a suburban or semi-rural community that was also sheltered by distance from the violence and vice of Chicago itself. Moreover, Dr. Hemingway owned a cabin in northern Michigan where his oldest son spent summers developing a life-long passion for hunting and fishing apart from middle-class society.
             Acting as a counterweight, Hemingway's mother tried to instill conventional values in her children in the designated role of family disciplinarian. She insisted that Hemingway attend church, that he take music lessons, and that he generally embrace the prevalent Protestant work ethic values of mainstream, Anglo-Saxon America during the Progressive era. Hemingway appears to have rankled at the strictures that his mother's sense of moral order imposed upon him. She was forceful if not domineering with Ernest. A major rift arose between them when Hemingway returned to the United States from service with the American Red Cross in World War I. Despite the wounds (physical, psychological, and spiritual) that he had received, Grace Hemingway complained bitterly about the slow pace of his re-adjustment to normal, civilian life. She demanded that he leave the seclusion of recuperating at the family's Michigan retreat for gainful employment. Ultimately, the budding author left his childhood's nest in the wilderness and entered into the domain of Paris in the 1920s, thereby upping the ante while breaking the rules of game.
             More tragically, Hemingway's father suffered from diabetes, financial misfortunes, and chronic depression. All...