In the desolate quiet of the New England mountains, the supernatural is nothing compared to the power of human desire.
Lichen, a farmer in a remote corner of the Berkshires, is a man tormented. His aging, sickly wife, Mrs. Rutledge, believes she's being poisoned by a phantom rival: a dead woman named Ora.
But the phantom is all too real.
Lichen has fallen into a terrifying, consuming passion with the alluring ghost of his deceased neighbor, Ora Brand. Every night, he leaves the bedside of his living, suffering wife to keep a secret, spectral rendezvous on the frozen mountain.
As Mrs. Rutledge's health fades and the neighbors whisper about witchcraft, the local lawyer, Saul Rutledge, is drawn into the mystery. He discovers that the real horror isn't the supernatural haunting, but the emotional truth behind it: a desperate man, a dying woman, and a love that exists only in the mind.
Edith Wharton delivers a masterful study in atmosphere and psychological horror, turning the classic ghost story into a bleak and devastating examination of isolation, guilt, and the dark landscape of rural despair. This is a haunting tale where the human heart proves far more cruel than any spirit.
