Lieutenant Henry, American ambulance driver in the Italian campaign, falls in love with Catherine Barkley, an English nurse, and they try to escape the war together. Hemingway wrote this after his own wounding in Italy, his own affair, his own losses. The prose is stripped to essentials, the emotions conveyed through what is not said. The ending, when it comes, is devastating. Hemingway rewrote it forty-seven times. The rain falls throughout; by the end, you know what the rain means. The world breaks everyone. Afterward, many are strong at the broken places.