As for the Duchess, she was all for music, play-acting and young company. The Duke was a silent man, stepping ... ... was kept burning for her all day. When the young are denied their natural pleasures they turn often enough to religion and it was a mercy, as my grandmother.

Summer's heroine is Charity Royall, foster child of one of her small, rural New England village's leading citizens, Lawyer Royall. Charity is just that, a charity-child, brought into the village from the nearby "Mountain," a loose community of social outcasts.

As young Newland Archer, lawyer and man about town, gazes up at his soon-to-be fiance, May Welland, in the Mingott-family opera box, he is disconcerted by the arrival of May's cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, who has left her profligate but wealthy Polish husband."

When Hidden Tragedies Surface On Their Own...



Ethan Frome is set in the fictional New England town of Starkfield, where a visiting engineer tells the story of his encounter with Ethan Frome, a man with a history of thwarted dreams and desires. The accumulated longing of Frome ends in an ironic turn of events.



The engineer, staying temporarily in town while he works nearby, is the narrator who tells the story of Frome. His initial impressions are based on his observations of Frome going about his mundane tasks in Starkfield, and something about him catches the eye and curiosity of the...