The Reef

Edith Wharton's insightful classic, first published in 1912, was a daring challenge to the social and sexual conventions of the time, and its penetrating look into the nature of male-female relationships is still provocative today.

When George Darrow, a young American diplomat in Paris, is slighted by the woman he intends to propose marriage to, he has a brief, seemingly inconsequential affair with a spirited young woman whom he has taken under his wing. Months later, Darrow and the widowed...