So, Ethan lives in this boring hick town with his wife who is a supposedly sick, but is most likely faking an illness because that's the most interesting thing there is to do on the farm on which they live. They don't have any children because Xena's uterus has holes in it or something. Basically, they are living out their lives in utter mediocrity farming mud and eating porridge or whatever it is that they farm and eat in New England.

After this scene is agonizingly set over an entire chapter in arrives the antagonist of the story, Mattie who the Fromes hire to help take care of Xena because Ethan has to harvest more mud and can't give Xena the attention she needs. In lou of the hot lesbian sex that Mattie and Xena could of had while Ethan was out herding dirt, Ethan and Mattie fall in love with each other as one would expect they would since Xena has all the sexual appeal of the rotting carcass of a whale. Mattie is a supple young lass and Ethan would probably have a better chance of getting a hand job from Mattie. If he was lucky she might even let him put it in her shitter. Of course in Edith's world the love blossomed between them without lust ever setting in, because a little sexual tension might have made this story at least slightly interesting. Basically this is all that happens until the last page of the book.

Fast forwarding through all the useless knitting instructions and long winded descriptions of sand that compromise every chapter between the first and last. Ethan is taking Mattie to the train station because Xena finally figured out that they were in love and she fired Mattie. Ethan contemplates eloping with Mattie, but ultimately decides not to because they're Puritans or Quakers and fear god would rape the shit out of him if he left his wife. On the way to the train station they decide to go sledding in the middle of the night because that's what people do in Edith Wharton's world when people are madly in love. I was hoping Edith was using sledding as a metaphor for Ethan slipping Mattie the tube steak, but alas, by no stretch of the imagination could it be taken that way.

The scene that unfolded next would have been more believable if Godzilla attacked New England and stepped on Xena so Ethan and Mattie could live together in eternal retarded bliss. It would have been more believable if Ethan suddenly realized that he could fly and jetted off to someplace more interesting, such as anywhere other than New England. It would have been more believable if they were both transported into the future and Mattie won the superbowl. But, instead of any of those more plausible endings, Mattie convinces Ethan that they should kill themselves by sledding into an elm tree. To which Ethan replies, "DUUUUURRRRRRRRR, OK FATTIE, LETS GO SNED INTO TREE! HURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!" So, they sled into the tree, Mattie dies and Ethan is crippled and Xena now has to take care of him. An ending that is as happy as it is stupid.

It's staggering on just how many levels this ending fails. First the stupid whore that wrote this shit wants me to think that Mattie can convince Ethan to kill himself as a way to solve their problems. "Ethan, since it isn't socially acceptable that we run away together why don't we simply end our lives and that will solve all our problems." "That sounds like an ideal and well thought out solution Mattie, Kudos on thinking outside the box." Then immediately after the author forces us to make that impossible leap of faith she has us make another in having us believe that someone with any shred of sanity would think that sledding into a tree is a viable way to kill yourself. That doesn't even remotely have a good chance of working, and what a sissy way to die. If Ethan had anything in his sack he would have insisted on something more manly, such as reading the works of Edith Wharton until you bored yourself to death. That would take stamina.

In conclusion, I can't understand why this horrible book is in the curriculum. Not only does it try the attention span of even the most patient reader, but the plot is horrible and uninteresting even if you lived in the period in which it was set. The only reason I can see to inflict this atrocity of literature on a high school class is to show all the whiny depressed goth kids that their life could be even more boring if they lived in New England. This book serves as a benchmark of depression that states if any day in your life is as uninteresting as the lives of those in this book then you just need to kill yourself. If Edith Wharton had written something, anything other than what is in this book it could have held my attention more. If she instead would have chronicled a day in my life where I did nothing but sleep all day it would have been a more interesting read, because at some point during my slumber I would roll over and scratch my balls.