Ethan Frome

In 1921, Edith Wharton became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, earning the award for The Age of Innocence. But Wharton also wrote several other novels, as well as poems and short stories that made her not only famous but popular among her contemporaries. That included her good friend Henry James, and she counted among her acquaintances Teddy Roosevelt and Sinclair Lewis.

Ethan Frome tells the story of a small fictional town in Massachusetts and the ambitions of the title character, Ethan Frome, whose desires lead him through an ironic turn of events that bring unintended consequences. Part of the tale was inspired by real-life events that occurred in Wharton’s own childhood.