From a letter written in July 1961 by the psychiatrist Howard Rome, who treated Ernest Hemingway at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, before the writer’s suicide earlier that month. The letter is addressed to Hemingway’s widow, Mary. Ernest Hemingway, a biography by Mary Dearborn, will be published in May by Knopf.

Dear Mary,

As you might imagine, I’ve asked myself the same questions. A discussion of suicide was threaded through all of our talks from the very first day. He said that I could trust him; in fact, he pointed out that I had no alternative but to trust…