Thornton Niven Wilder was born on April 17,1897, in Madison, Wisconsin, the survivor of twin sons born to Isabella Thornton and Amos Parker Wilder. At the time of Wilder's birth, his father, a newspaperman with a Ph.D. in political science, was working as editor of the Wisconsin State Journal. A strict and religious man, Wilder's father exerted a forceful influence over his second child. The young Thornton often felt the pull between his mother's encouragement and his father's disapproval.

In 1906, the Wilder family moved to Hong Kong, where Amos assumed the diplomatic position of consul general. There, the nine-year-old Thornton went to a German school for six months before returning to the United States with his mother. In the following years, Thornton attended schools in California and China, eventually graduating from Berkeley High School in 1915. He then spent two years at Oberlin College in Ohio, transferred...