We missed the turnoff, above which was a sign of young Ernest Hemingway in an immaculate Italian military uniform. My toddler son and I, having just arrived for an early-morning walk in Fossalta di Piave, a town in northern Italy north of Venice, doubled-back.

Down an unpaved road to a stretch of the Piave, a river in which we had both bathed and fished and swam, we found ourselves parking in the shade where Hemingway nearly lost his life.