Published in 1911, Ethan Frome is widely regarded as Edith Wharton's most revealing novel and her finest achievement in fiction. Set in the bleak, barren landscape of New England, it is the tragic tale of Ethan Frome, bound to the demands of his farm and his tyrannical wife, Zeena, and his star crossed love for Zeena's vivacious cousin, Mattie Silver. "In its spine chilling creation of rural isolation, hardscrabble poverty and wintry landscape," writes Alfred Kazin in his Afterword, "Ethan Frome overwhelms the reader as a drama of irresistible necessity." An exemplary work of literary realism, setting and character, Ethan From stands as one of the great classics of twentieth-century American literature.
(back cover)