Set against the frozen waste of a harsh New England winter Edith Whartons Ethan Frome" is a tale of despair forbidden emotions & sexual tensions published with an introduction & notes by Elizabeth Ammons in " Penguin Classics". Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm & struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult suspicious & hypochondriac wife Zeenie. But when Zeenies vivacious cousin enters their household as a hired girl Ethan finds himself obsessed with her & with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. In one of American fictions finest & most intense narratives Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio toward their tragic destinies. Different in both tone & theme from Whartons other works " Ethan Frome" has become perhaps her most enduring & most widely read novel. Edith Wharton (1862-1937) born Edith Newbold Jones was a member of a distinguished New York family said to be the basis for the idiom keeping up with the Joneses. During her life she published more than forty volumes including novels stories verse essays travel books & memoirs; for years she published poetry & short stories in magazines but the book that made Wharton famous was " The House of Mirth" (1905) which established her both as a writer of distinction & popular appeal. In 1920 Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature with her novel " The Age of Innocence". If you enjoyed " Ethan Frome" you might like Nathaniel Hawthornes " The Scarlet Letter" also available in " Penguin Classics"."