Coming Home

Edith Wharton's novels and short stories are full of her humorous understanding of the upper classes. Besides her writing, she was a highly regarded landscape architect and interior designer. She left America for France beginning in 1907 and stayed during World War 1. Even though a foreigner she remained and helped the refugees wherever she could. Ethan Frome is her most famous work. Coming Home was first published in 1915. It is the story of a French soldier who takes his revenge on a barbaric German officer. The French soldier's fiancée gave herself to the German so that he will spare her family and their home.