Edith Newbold Jones Wharton (1862-1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer, best known for The Age of Innocence, which won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, making Wharton the first woman to win the award. Ethan Frome is set in a fictional New England town named Starkfield, where an unnamed narrator tells the story of his encounter with Ethan Frome, a man with dreams and desires that end in an ironic turn of events.