Ernest Hemingway drew from his own war experiences when he crafted this remarkable story of an American ambulance driver serving on the Italian front and his love for a beautiful English nurse. The novel, Hemingway's first best seller, is marked by vivid depictions of the horrors of the battlefield--but also by the heartrending vicissitudes of a passionate affair of the heart between his protagonists, Frederic and Catherine, leading up to a tragic ending that is all the more powerful for its famously understated expression.