Justine Brent, a nurse at the Hope Hospital in Hanaford, meets John Amherst, the idealistic assistant manager of the Westmore cotton mills, at the bedside of a maimed mill-hand. Amherst marries the mills’ young widowed owner, Bessy Westmore, hoping to reform conditions for the workers, but their marriage frays, and Justine’s friendship with Bessy draws all three toward a decision about life and death.
Wharton’s 1907 novel joins labour reform and the ethics of mercy killing to her familiar study of marriage and money. Download the free EPUB.