The first chapter opens with an unnamed male narrator spending a winter in Starkfield. He sets out to learn about the life of a mysterious local figure named Ethan Frome, a man who had been injured in a horrific "smash-up" twenty-four years before. Frome is described as "the most striking figure in Starkfield", "the ruin of a man" with a "careless powerful look…in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain".