Summer

Seventeen-year-old Charity is a young woman brought up by a prosperous attorney in a small New England town. When Charity falls in love with young Lucius Harney, an educated town visitor, she experiences personal freedom and an awakening of desire. Their romance, however, is shadowed by her uneasy ties to her guardian, rigid social expectations, and the harsh truths of her origins. After Harney leaves Charity for a wealthier match and she faces an unwanted pregnancy, Charity returns to the mountain community of her birth, learns of her mother’s grim fate, and eventually agrees to marry her guardian, resigning herself to a lonely small-town future. Adapted from the novel by Edith Wharton.