The Ice Palace
When love crosses the Mason-Dixon line, the thaw can be brutal.
“The Ice Palace” was written shortly after The Offshore Pirate, during Fitzgerald’s most prolific early period in 1920. Newly married and newly minted as a literary celebrity, he was fascinated by contrasts—youth and age, wealth and poverty, North and South. In this story, he turned his attention to the cultural dissonance between regions of the U.S., drawn partly from Zelda’s Southern background and his own Northern upbringing.
Published in The Saturday Evening Post on May 22, 1920 (just a week before “The Offshore Pirate”), the story was both a romantic tale and a social commentary. It would go on to become one of the most widely reprinted stories in Flappers and Philosophers, and a favorite among critics.
The Story
Sally Carrol Happer is a dreamy, warm-blooded Southern belle from Tarleton, Georgia, who’s grown weary of the slow rhythm of life and longs for something colder, sharper—something Northern. So when her suitor, Harry Bellamy, invites her to his icy hometown in Minnesota, she accepts, eager to be transformed.
What follows is a poetic clash of climates—meteorological and emotional. Sally Carrol is swept into a world of crisp manners and even crisper snowdrifts, and though she tries to fit in, the glittering frost begins to cut. The final, unforgettable scene takes place inside a frozen palace at a winter carnival, where silence and isolation bring Sally Carrol face-to-face with what she truly values.
Part love story, part cautionary tale, The Ice Palace is Fitzgerald’s meditation on how identity is shaped by place—and how romanticizing the unfamiliar can leave you shivering in the dark.
Published: May 22, 1920 (The Saturday Evening Post)