The Nick Adams Stories

Nick Adams is the name that Hemingway gave to the fictional persona, largely autobiographical, whom he often wrote about. Like Hemingway himself, Nick is the son of a doctor ("The Indian Camp"; "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife"); he relishes fishing and hunting in the northern peninsula of Michigan ("Big Two-Hearted River"). He romances a young girl named Marjorie, a summer waitress at a summer resort ("The End of Something"; "The Three-Day Blow"). He goes abroad during World War I and serves as an American Red Cross ambulance driver; he also is a courier, carrying chocolates and cigarettes to Italian soldiers on the Austro-Italian battlefront. And, like Hemingway, Nick suffers a knee wound ("In Another Country"). Unlike Hemingway, however, Nick suffered post-traumatic shock; his mind periodically seems to come unhinged ("A Way You'll Never Be"). In all, Hemingway wrote at least a dozen stories that center around Nick Adams, and in 1972, Scribner's published a volume entitled The Nick Adams Stories.