Amory Blaine, a young Midwesterner, is convinced that he has an exceptionally promising future. The reader follows Amory as he falls in love with Isabelle Borge, a wealthy young debutante; a cruel and narcissistic flapper named Rosalind Connage; and Eleanor, a reckless eighteen-year-old atheist.

An autobiographical novel and a portrait of the dawning Jazz Age, This Side of Paradise launched F. Scott Fitzgerald's career and turned him into an overnight literary sensation.