The Valley of Decision

Edith Wharton’s first novel, The Valley of Decision, is one of her most important and distinguished novels, yet it has received relatively little (and mostly superficial) attention, in spite of its initial popularity. Set in northern Italy in the late eighteenth century, it concerns the decisions that must be made by Odo Valsecca, a young man of liberal ideas who inherits a dukedom during the years of the French Revolution. Forced to choose between conflicting loyalties – those to the forces of social reform with which he allied himself before he came to power, or those of the feudal tradition to which he belongs by blood – Odo must define himself.