Igloo Reading

ICE PALACE (411 pp.)--Edna Ferber--Doubleday ($4.50).

At 70, Edna Ferber is still not over the bestseller habit, even though her books relentlessly suggest that bestsellers do not make the best reading. She has, as a critic once said of Edmund Wilson, "pencil, pad and purpose." Six years ago Novelist Ferber worked up some travel notes and impressions into Giant (TIME, Sept. 29, 1952), a novel about Texas that was as close to the mark as a tenderfoot's lariat, but waspish enough to infuriate Texans and amuse the citizens of the other 47 states. After Texas what? Alaska, naturally, and it is a safe bet that Edna Ferber's Ice Palace will be must reading all the way from Seattle to the DEW line.

Author Ferber has been to Alaska four times, and must have done a lot of research, too: her book is very knowing about such matters as parkas, salmon fishing and Gold Rush prostitutes. She also makes an emotional and just plea for Alaskan statehood. But decades of panning fictional gold (Show Boat, Saratoga Trunk) have taught canny Prospector Ferber where to find the pay lode. Her heroine, Christine Storm, is beautiful enough to still the growl of a Malemute, so passionate about her native Alaska that she would not swap a fox parka for an autumn-haze mink. Grandpa Kennedy is a tycoon, but she prefers Grandpa Thor Storm. The name should prepare readers for the fact that he has noble Norwegian blood.

Grandpa Storm hates to see Alaska's wealth drained away by "outside" (Stateside) capitalists. To him Alaska is the last frontier of both the nation's natural wealth and the individual's freedom. He lives in an old cabin, runs a high-minded weekly, and fights with Grandpa Kennedy for the mind of beautiful Christine. In Author Ferber's hands, the battle is unequal. Not only does Christine refuse to marry the rich man's son Kennedy has in mind for her, but it is also reasonably clear that a part-Eskimo pilot, one Ross Guildenstern, will blend his dark good looks with Chris's golden beauty to help produce a better Alaska. On the way to an unexceptional ending, Author Ferber generously shares with the reader all her newfound, often interesting Alaskan lore--and when she raises her voice, it sounds as though she really cares.

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