When ten-year-old Rebecca goes to live with her spinster aunts, her aunts find her to be more of a handful than they bargained for. But even more surprising than the transition of Rebecca into a well-mannered young lady are the effects that Rebecca has on her aunts' humdrum lives.

Ethan Frome, a poor farmer in nineteenth-century Starkfield, Massachusetts, sets off a devastating chain of events when he falls in love with the vivacious Mattie, cousin of his sickly, demanding wife.