Growing up in the frozen, snow-padded town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, Ruthie, dealing with shame handed down from her immigrant ancestors and her indomitable mother, and violence endured by her high school friends, wonders if she’ll ever get out of this town alive. Once home to the country’s oldest and most illustrious families—the Cabots, the Lowells: the “first, best people”—by the tail end of the twentieth century, it is an unforgiving...