Ethan Frome

A nameless male narrator works for a power plant, and due to a carpenters' strike, finds himself forced to spend a winter in the nearby small (fictional) town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The man who chauffeurs him daily to work is a limping, quiet man named Ethan Frome, a lifelong resident and local fixture of the community. The narrator learns that Frome's limp arose from being injured in an accident. The story then flashes back 24 years to detail Frome's past.
The young Frome is married to a sickly woman named Zeena (Zenobia), who appears older than her age, is unkind to Ethan, and whose life revolves around seeking expensive treatments for her varied illnesses. Although the Fromes have limited means themselves, they have charitably taken in Zeena's cousin Mattie, whose family is poor. Ethan falls in love with Mattie, and it becomes increasingly clear that Mattie returns his affections. While it remains ambiguous if Zeena suspects Ethan's unfaithfulness, she makes plans to send Mattie away. Zeena claims that, because of her failing health, her physician has recommended she hire a maid who will relieve her of housework. Zeena has already arranged for the hired girl to arrive soon by train, and Mattie must leave immediately. Ethan, miserable at the thought of losing Mattie, considers running away with her, but he lacks the money to do so, and will feel guilty about leaving Zeena with the farm.
The next morning, Ethan rushes into town to try to obtain a cash advance from a customer for a load of lumber in order to have the money with which to elope with Mattie. His plan is unhinged by guilt, however, when the customer's wife expresses honest compassion for Ethan. He realizes that he cannot cheat this kindly woman and her husband out of their money.
Ethan comes back to the farm and picks up Mattie to take her to the train station. They stop at a hill upon which they had once planned to go sledding and decide to sled together as a way of delaying their sad parting. After their first run, Mattie suggests a suicide pact: that they go down again, and steer the sled directly into a big elm tree, so they will never be parted and that they may spend their last moments together. The resulting crash leaves both alive but permanently disfigured, Ethan with a permanent limp and Mattie paralyzed from a spinal injury.
Returning to the present, the narrator tells of being forced by a blizzard to stay the night at the Frome house, the first stranger to enter the house in twenty years. He witnesses an unhappy scene with Mattie and the Fromes living together, with Zeena as Mattie's caregiver. Ethan and Mattie have gotten their wish to stay together, but in mutual unhappiness and discontent, and ironically Mattie has now developed an irritable disposition, and the sickly Zeena is rising to the challenge of becoming a caretaker. Zeena is a constant presence between the two, although it remains ambiguous as to whether she knew of their dalliance.