SOURCE: "Edna Ferber's Novel of Alaska's Dreams and Dramas," in New York Herald Tribune Book Review, March 30, 1958, p. 1.

Gruening, who served as governor of Alaska from 1939 to 1953 and senator from 1958 to 1969, was also a critic and author of several books about Alaska. In the following favorable review, he examines the plot, characters, and themes of Ice Palace.

A painting of Alaska influenced by modern abstractional tendencies would be large, sparkling, brilliant with blues—of sky and sea—gleaming with whites of mammoth glaciers and towering peaks, vivid with the warm greens of virgin forest and tundra, crowned with the gold of the Midnight Sun, shimmering with the yellows and purples of long twilights or of the wavering aurora, and flashed with the crimson and pink that suggest the bustle of vibrant human life.

Such is the arresting picture, though not abstract, that Edna Ferber, great word painter, has...