This is the story of Charity Royall, a child of mountain moonshiners adopted into a family from a poor New England town. Charity has a passionate love affair with Lucius Harney, a young, educated man from the city. Edith Wharton's Summer deals frankly -- honestly -- with the sexual awakening of a young woman. Not surprisingly, when the book was first published (in 1917), that stirred a commotion. Deservedly so! Wharton had a very real gift; it's for good cause she's so well-remembered.

Author Biography

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.