I noticed that this book was being enjoyed by quite a few people I follow on social media so I took a chance and ordered it, despite the pile of library books and TBR pile on my night stand. Don’t judge, it’s just how things roll here, I’ll never catch up with my reading and my fines at the library do someone some good I’m sure.
The Frozen River is historical fiction at its best. The author, Ariel Lawhon, gives an explanation at the end of the book as to what led her to write it. “She collects people,” is what it boils down to, and the person she collected for this novel was Marth Ballard, a real-life midwife who delivered hundreds of babies in the newly minted United States.
Martha (February 9, 1735 - June 9, 1812) kept diaries throughout her career as a midwife and healer, documenting all the births, deaths, and illnesses she assisted at and witnessed in Hallowell, Maine, which is along the Kennebec River. The river is an important character in the novel.
I didn’t realize until I read the author’s note that Martha was an actual person, as are most of the characters in the novel. I was delighted to find that this character who I had grown to admire and like so much existed and her diaries provided the background for the author’s drawing of her character.
The novel opens with Martha, having just delivered a baby, being called to examine the body of a man just discovered beneath the ice of the Kennebec. She determines he was murdered and we come to find out he had recently been accused of a brutal rape, along with a local judge.
During the winter, a brutal one weatherwise, Martha is called to testify at the rape trial as well as at hearings about the dead man all while delivering babies, and dealing with a host of family problems some related to the trials and others purely personal. The action of the novel is well paced and the author deftly draws a picture of a loving but complicated family life. I especially loved the descriptions of Martha’s workroom and her domestic chores. As someone who has always aspired to a stillroom and apothecary garden these bits of insight into the life of a healer in the late 1700s was so interesting to me.
What was also eye-opening to me was the nature of the court system so early in our country’s history. This story takes place even before the Bill of Rights was ratified so the system we are familiar with did not exist and the courtroom scenes in the book come off as chaotic and weirdly amateurish, half British and a little New World, it seems to have a foot in each and doing none of it too well. The evolution of our justice system was and remains a bumpy one.
Lawhon’s description of Martha’s marriage is one filled with love and respect in a time when women were merely chattel, good for kitchen and bedroom activities, and not much more.
I love a mystery and I found myself fully invested in this one, who killed Joshua Burgess and put him in the river? The tension fueled by this question lasts until the very end of the novel and the answer is surprising and satisfying. Lawhon crafted it perfectly.
This is the first of Ariel Lawhon’s books I have read and I will be looking for more. I highly recommend it if you enjoy historical fiction or mysteries. I would warn that there are some descriptions of sexual assault, not too graphic but enough that if that is a sensitive or triggering subject for you, best not to risk your wellness.
Let me know if you have read The Frozen River and if you liked it.
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WHY whenever I read one of your book posts do I end up with another book on my Must Read List? I will NEVER finish this list in my lifetime (or probably in the next lifetime for that matter!) I am now person #462 on the list at the Toronto Public Library for The Frozen River!! 😉