Would someone please help me to identify a book. Its one I read about 20 years ago, and I thought about it last night, but I cant remember the title.
The story goes something like this:
A farmer lives with his invalid wife. Only she may not really be an invalid, perhaps she’s faking it. Anyway, the farmer has to take care of his wife on all his spare time, and he does’nt have any kind of social life. He and his wife live a very somber and difficult life.
Then the wifes younger sister comes out to stay with the couple and help take care of the wife. She’s a (relatively) fun loving gal, and she brings joy to the farmer, however, the wife is very spiteful and mean. She takes it all out on her younger sister.
Anyway, the farmer and the sister fall in love, and plot to run away together. But they decide to go sledriding down a hill together one last time before they leave. During the sledride, they smash into a tree, and the sister is paralized.
Then the final part of the book is the wife, now doing apparently well, taking care of her paralized sister. She’s still mean to her, but the sister can’t do anything about it cause of her condition. And the farmer ended up going through life with guilt hanging over his head.
Anyway, I believe the setting for this book was in New England. Thanks in advance.
Oh and at the end, Mattie sort of “became” the wife- she ended up just as ill tempered, etc. as she used to be. Depressing stuff, no?