On a poor farm near Starkfield in western Massachusetts, Ethan Frome struggles to wrest a living from the land, unassisted by his whining and hypochondrialcal wife Zeena. Zeena's young cousin Mattie Silver is left destitute, and only place she can go is to Ethan's farm. An embittered man and an enchanting young woman meet in such circumstances, unleashing predictable consequences as passions are aroused between the three protagonists.

At the Van Meter family's retreat on the pristine New England island of Waskeke, Winn and his wife Biddy are preparing for the marriage of his daughter Daphne to the affable young scion Greyson Duff. Though Biddy has planned the wedding with military precision, the arrangements are sideswept by a storm of salacious misbehavior and intractable lust.

At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices - those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal - that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment.