The Ice Palace

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

A young southern woman is bored with her unchanging environment, and—much to her friends’ chagrin—gets engaged to a northern man. After disregarding their concerns, she travels north during the winter to visit her fiancé’s home town and meet his family, and comes to a major realization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Publishing LLC
• Release date: Apr 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781952438332

F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota to Edward and Mary Fitzgerald, he was raised in Buffalo in a middle-class Catholic family. Fitzgerald excelled in school from a young age and was known as an active and curious student, primarily of literature. In 1908 the family returned to St. Paul, where Fitzgerald published his first work of fiction, a detective story, at the age of 13. He completed his high school education at the Newman School in New Jersey before enrolling at Princeton University. In 1917, reeling from an ill-fated relationship and waning in his academic pursuits, Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton to join the Army. While stationed in Alabama, he began a relationship with Zelda Sayre, a Montgomery socialite. In 1919, he moved to New York City, where he struggled to launch his career as a writer. His first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), was a resounding success, earning Fitzgerald a sustainable income and allowing him to marry Zelda. Following the birth of his daughter Scottie in 1921, Fitzgerald published his second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned (1922), and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), a collection of short stories. His rising reputation in New York’s social and literary scenes coincided with a growing struggle with alcoholism and the deterioration of Zelda’s mental health. Despite this, Fitzgerald managed to complete his masterpiece The Great Gatsby (1925), a withering portrait of corruption and decay at the heart of American society. After living for several years in France in Italy, the end of the decade marked the decline of Fitzgerald’s reputation as a writer, forcing him to move to Hollywood in pursuit of work as a screenwriter. His alcoholism accelerated in these last years, leading to severe heart problems and eventually his death at the age of 44. By this time, he was virtually forgotten by the public, but critical reappraisal and his influence on such writers as Ernest Hemingway, J.D. Salinger, and Richard Yates would ensure his status as one of the greatest figures in twentieth-century American fiction.

Book preview

The Ice Palace

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Start Publishing LLC

Copyright © 2020 by Start Publishing LLC

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

First Start Publishing eBook edition.

Start Publishing is a registered trademark of Start Publishing LLC

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-952438-33-2

Table of Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

The Ice Palace

I

The sunlight dripped over the house like golden paint over an art jar, and the freckling shadows here and there only intensified the rigor of the bath of light. The Butterworth and Larkin houses flanking were entrenched behind great stodgy trees; only the Happer house took the full sun, and all day long faced the dusty road-street with a tolerant kindly patience. This was the city of Tarleton in southernmost Georgia, September afternoon.

Up in her bedroom window Sally Carrol Happer rested her nineteen-year-old chin on a fifty-two-year-old sill and watched Clark Darrow’s ancient Ford turn the corner. The car was hot—being partly metallic it retained all the heat it absorbed or evolved—and Clark Darrow sitting bolt upright at the wheel wore a pained, strained expression as though he considered himself a spare part, and rather likely to break. He laboriously crossed two dust ruts, the wheels squeaking indignantly at the encounter, and then with a terrifying expression he gave the steering-gear a final wrench and deposited self and car approximately in front of the Happer steps. There was a heaving sound, a death-rattle, followed by a short silence; and then the air was rent by a startling whistle.

Sally Carrol gazed down sleepily. She started to yawn, but finding this quite impossible unless she raised her chin from the window-sill, changed her mind and continued silently to regard the car, whose owner sat brilliantly if perfunctorily at attention as he waited for an answer to his signal. After a moment the whistle once more split the dusty air.

Good mawnin’.

With difficulty Clark twisted his tall body round and bent a distorted glance on the window.

Tain’t mawnin’, Sally Carrol.

Isn’t it, sure enough?

What you doin’?

Eatin’ ‘n apple.

Come on go swimmin’—want to?

Reckon so.

How ‘bout hurryin’ up?

Sure enough.

Sally Carrol sighed voluminously and raised herself with profound inertia from the floor where she had been occupied in alternately destroyed parts