Hemingway returned home early in 1919 to a time of readjustment. Not yet 20 years old, he had gained from the war a maturity that was at odds with living at home without a job and with the need for recuperation.[22] As Reynolds explains, "Hemingway could not really tell his parents what he thought when he saw his bloody knee. He could not say how scared he was in another country with surgeons who could not tell him in English if his leg was coming off or not."[23] In September, he took a fishing and camping trip with high school friends to the back-country of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.[18] The trip became the inspiration for his short story "Big Two-Hearted River", in which the semi-autobiographical character Nick Adams takes to the country to find solitude after returning from war.[24] A family friend offered him a job in Toronto, and with nothing else to do, he accepted. Late that year he began as a freelancer, staff writer, and foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star Weekly. He returned to Michigan the following June[22] and then moved to Chicago in September 1920 to live with friends, while still filing stories for the Toronto Star.[25]
In Chicago, he worked as an associate editor of the monthly journal Cooperative Commonwealth, where he met novelist Sherwood Anderson.[25] When St. Louis native Hadley Richardson came to Chicago to visit the sister of Hemingway's roommate, he became infatuated and later claimed, "I knew she was the girl I was going to marry".[26] Hadley was red-haired, with a "nurturing instinct", and eight years older than Hemingway.[26] Despite being older than Hemingway, Hadley, who had grown up with an overprotective mother, seemed less mature than usual for a young woman her age.[27] Bernice Kert, author of The Hemingway Women, claims Hadley was "evocative" of Agnes, but that Hadley had a childishness that Agnes lacked. The two corresponded for a few months and then decided to marry and travel to Europe.[26] They wanted to visit Rome, but Sherwood Anderson convinced them to visit Paris instead, writing letters of introduction for the young couple.[28] They were married on September 3, 1921; two months later, Hemingway was hired as foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, and the couple left for Paris. Of Hemingway's marriage to Hadley, Meyers claims: "With Hadley, Hemingway achieved everything he had hoped for with Agnes: the love of a beautiful woman, a comfortable income, a life in Europe