The details of Edward Hoagland's life and personality shed light on both the materials and the style of his writings. He was born in New York City, and went to Deerfield Academy and then Harvard. His first novel, Cat Man (1956), was accepted by Houghton Mifflin before he graduated from Harvard in 1954. He had already shown a dislike of conventional sports, preferring to tramp the woods alone. His love of solitude and silent observation of wildlife rather than social conversation may have resulted from a severe stammer that still persists. This stammer has, according to Hoagland himself, influenced how he writes: "Words are spoken at considerable cost to me, so a great value is placed on each one. That has had some effect on me as a writer. As a child, since I couldn't talk to people, I became close to animals. I became an observer, and in all...