Eager to escape his weak-willed physician father and domineering mother, 19-year-old Nick Adams leaves his Michigan home in 1917 and sets out for New York to become a writer. After a few days on the road he is thrown off a freight train by a cruel brakeman and finds himself in the company of a punch-drunk ex-prizefighter, "The Battler," and his black manager, Bugs. He soon decides to wire his father for money to return home, but a philosophical telegraph operator subtly talks him out of it; instead, Nick becomes assistant to the drunken, drug-addicted Billy Campbell, who acts as a publicist for Mr. Turner, a burlesque promoter. Turner replaces Billy with Nick until the show reaches New York, where Nick tries to become a newspaperman. Rejected by a newspaper editor for lack of experience, Nick becomes a busboy at a banquet held to recruit ambulance drivers for the Italian Army in its war against Austria and Germany. Nick signs up, and later saves the life of Major Padula, his commanding officer in Italy; later, his own life is saved when John, an Italian-American orderly, pulls him out of a bombed trench. While convalescing, Nick falls deeply in love with his nurse, Rosanna Griffi, but she is critically wounded when the hospital is bombed; he begs a priest to marry them, and the young woman dies in his arms during the ceremony. Upon discharge, Nick receives a hero's welcome as he returns to the Michigan lake country, but his celebration is ruined by the discovery that his father committed suicide during his absence. He remains with his mother until her possessiveness becomes too much for him, and then leaves home again--this time as a man, not a boy.