Ethan Frome is a 1911 tale set in the aptly named town of Starkfield, Massachusetts and told by an unnamed narrator, who is spending a bleak winter in town on business. He spots a quiet man with a limp who seems both powerful and ruined, a “most striking figure”.  He learns from the tight-lipped townspeople that he, Ethan Frome, had been injured in a “smash-up” twenty-four years earlier, but not very much more, other than that his ambitions had been thwarted by his return to the family farm to care for an injured father.  By chance he hires Ethan as a driver; during one of their trips they become stranded in a snowstorm and take shelter at his farm. Here the framing story stops and a sad tale of the conflict between fulfilling one’s duty and following one’s heart takes over.   Ethan, stuck in a loveless marriage to his sickly wife Zeena, develops strong feelings for her young cousin Mattie, who has come to live with them and care for Zeena, who, of course, cannot fail to notice. Emotions intensify when Zeena leaves for a night to seek treatment and become unbearable when Zeena returns and announces she is sending Mattie away to make way for a more efficient caretaker.  En route to the train station, Ethan and Mattie come clean and hatch a fateful plan that does not turn out quite the way they plan and cripples both for life. The framing story returns in the epilogue with a cruel and ironic turnabout.   

The New York Times described Ethan Frome as “a compelling and haunting story”.  It was made into a film in 1993 starring Liam Neeson, Patricia Arquette, Joan Allen and Tate Donovan.

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