To Have and Have Not is the dramatic story of Harry Morgan, an honest man who is forced into running contraband between Cuba and Key West as a means of keeping his crumbling family financially afloat. His adventures lead him into the world of the wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who throng the region, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair. Hemingway's most intriguing and tantalizing themes make their appearance: man's battle against the cruelty of nature, the pressures of society on the individual, and the existential qualities of life in the modern world.