Raymond Carver's spare, realistic stories about the hardscrabble lives of the working class are rooted in his own experience. Born in Clatskanie, Oregon, May 25, 1938, to Clevie Raymond Carver and Ella Beatrice Casey, Carver was raised in Yakima, Washington. His father, who suffered from alcoholism, worked in a sawmill, and the family was often financially strapped. A combination of marital difficulties, heavy drinking, and poverty contributed to Clevie Carver's emotional breakdown in 1957. That year, Raymond married sixteen-year-old Maryann Burk, and they had their first child, Christine LaRae Carver, who was born in the same hospital in which Carver's father was being treated. Their second child, Vance Lindsay, was born a year later. Carver was only twenty years old, but already he had two children. He was destined to repeat the pattern of his father's life: drinking heavily, working in low-paying jobs, and moving his family frequently.

Carver...