Born on the Ionian island of Lafcadio to Rosa Cassimati, a young woman of Greek descent, and Charles Bush Hearn, an Irish military surgeon in the service of the British army, Lafcadio Hearn's life was a procession of restless wandering and exotic travels. When he was two years old his father was transferred to the West Indies, but Hearn, his younger brother James, and his mother were dispatched to Dublin to live with paternal relatives. Hearn's mother, shy and unaccustomed to Irish life, soon suffered a physical and emotional breakdown, and in 1854 she left her children and returned to Greece. His father later married an English woman, an event for which Hearn never forgave him. Charles Hearn was eventually stationed in India, where he died from fever, and his two children were raised separately by relatives. Lafcadio became the ward of his great-aunt, Sarah Brenane, a devout Catholic...