Carter Martin's Kelbrn is a bildungsroman which begins in the early 20th Century when Miles Kelley is a child living on a farm near Fon du Lac, Wisconsin. To the dismay of the child, his alcoholic father sells the farm and moves the family to Madison, where the children can attend the university and he can work on his unsuccessful inventions. Miles joins the submarine corps when America enters World War I. Afterward he lives in New York City, where he works as a reporter and marries a sophisticated gynecologist, Cissy Barr. Her adventurous professional life leads to divorce, after which Miles...