Glenway Wescott was born in Kewashkum, Wisconsin, the oldest of six children. He left home in 1914, while still in high school, and went to live with relatives because of difficulties with his father. This pattern of leaving and returning to both his home in Wisconsin and his homeland was to characterize much of Wescott's life for the next twenty years. Though all of Wescott's writing during the early part of his career--through The Babe's Bed (1930)--was regional and midwestern in its subject matter and basic concerns, Wescott's life, like that of many other midwestern writers, was moving steadily eastward. He went first to Chicago in 1917, where he attended the University of Chicago for a year and a half (which ended his formal education) and formed a lifelong friendship with Monroe Wheeler. In 1919 Wescott went to New Mexico, where he stayed with the poet Yvor Winters, who had also...