Seven short stories from the prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Edith Wharton. With a wide variety of protagonists a cloistered monk to a struggling artist to a Governor to a New England lawyers wife she is flexing her writing muscles and trying on personas.
Includes The Last Asset, In Trust, The Pretext, The Verdict, The Pot-Boiler, and The Best Man. In the title story, the reader learns that the hermit, as a young boy, witnessed the killing of his parents and sister during an attack on his town.