I read this book as part of the November’s Autumn Classics
Challenge. Although Summer is set in rural America, the
Massachusetts Berkshires, rather than Wharton’s more usual
setting of New York high society, she’s still writing about
similar situations. Charity Royall is a young girl who is living
in the village of North Dormer which has nothing in it but a
library which hasn’t had a new book in it for over twenty years.
The books that are there are mouldering and damp and Charity
gets the job of running it all. Charity is really a mountain
girl but she was taken from her mother when she was a baby by
the lawyer Royall and although he never adopted her he is the
father figure in her life. Mrs Royall died seven years after
Charity arrived from the mountain. The mountain people live
their lives completely separate from the rest of society and
it’s a desperately hard and miserable existence for them. They
don’t seem to want to help themselves and are portrayed as
feckless, lawless drunks. Charity never hides the