Icebound

Icebound is a stage play by Owen Davis, first published in 1923. It's set in a remote Maine farmhouse as winter grips the countryside.

A family gathers after the death of its stern matriarch, expecting the estate to confirm old pecking orders—only to be jolted when the will hands control to an unexpected outsider.

The new heir takes charge with brisk practicality, insisting on repayment of debts and an honest day’s work. In the clash that follows with the family’s wayward son, private bargains and long-buried grievances surface. What begins as a standoff slowly edges toward redemption wrestled from bitterness and responsibility learned the hard way.

Davis turns the frozen landscape into a living metaphor: people here are as locked up as the river in January. The play probes inheritance and resentment, Yankee pride and moral duty, and the thaw that comes when compassion outlasts pride.

"Scene: The parlor of the Jordan Homestead at Venzie, Maine. It is late October, and through the two windows at the back one may see a bleak countryside, the grass brown and lifeless, and the bare limbs of the trees silhouetted against a gray sky. Here, in the room that for a hundred years has been the rallying point of the Jordan family.."