Ethan Frome

In the frozen landscape of Starkfield, Massachusetts, silence can be as powerful as any spoken confession.

Ethan Frome is a man trapped by poverty, duty, isolation, and an unhappy marriage. His bleak existence begins to change when Mattie Silver, his wife's young cousin, comes to live at the Frome farm. Warm, hopeful, and full of life, Mattie awakens in Ethan emotions and dreams he had long believed buried.

As their quiet attachment deepens, Ethan is forced to confront the painful distance between the life he has and the life he longs for. Against the severe beauty of a New England winter, Edith Wharton unfolds a restrained and devastating story of desire, responsibility, sacrifice, and the consequences of choices made when escape seems impossible.

First published in 1911, Ethan Frome remains one of Wharton's most haunting works-a compact psychological tragedy whose emotional power lies as much in what its characters cannot say as in what they reveal.

This BY2NEXT Collector's Edition presents Wharton's original public-domain text in a refined modern format, featuring a new preface, an author biography, character portraits, selected illustrations, and elegant typography for readers and collectors of classic American literature.