The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon Published by Diversified Publishing on December 12, 2023
Genres: Fiction / Historical / General, Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths, Fiction / Women
Format: Hardcover
Source: Book of the Month
From New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia and Code Name Helene comes a gripping historical mystery based on the real-life diary entries of Martha Ballard, an 18th-century midwife who found herself at the center of a murder trial.
Maine, 1789: As a midwife in the town of Hallowell, Martha Ballard knows how to keep a secret. Her neighbors respect her not only for her medical expertise and calm under pressure, but for her discretion in a community governed by rigid Puritan values. So when a man is found under the ice in the Kennebec river, Martha is the first person called to examine the body.
The dead man is Joshua Burgess, recently accused, along with the town judge, Joseph North, of raping the preacher's wife, Rebecca Foster. The case is set to go to trial in the coming months and Hallowell is churning with rumors. Martha, having tended to Rebecca’s wounds in the aftermath, is both a witness and a confidant of Rebecca’s, and while she feels certain she knows the truth of the night of the assault, she suspects there is more to the murder than meets the eye.
For years, Martha has recounted her every day in a leather-bound journal: deaths and births, the weather, town events, her patients and their treatments. As whispers and prejudices threaten to overflow into something bloodier, and North becomes more desperate to clear his name, Martha’s diary becomes the center of a mystery that risks tearing both her family and her town apart.
In The Frozen River, Ariel Lawhon brings to life a brave and compassionate unsung heroine of early American history, who refused to accept anything less than justice on behalf of women no one else would protect.
My Review
The Frozen River was a Book Of The Month book choice over the winter, and it was my selection for the month it became available. I was excited to see that it is a historical fiction based on a real Maine Midwife from the 1700s. I had never heard of this author, but I am so glad I took a chance on this book because I absolutely loved it. I can not stop thinking about it, and I finished it a week or so ago. I do not know about anybody else, but I am a tabber (is that even a word?) when it comes to reading. I tab pages, highlight, underline, and really mark the pages up, especially if the story is good, and WOW, this story was fantastic. Reader, I am sure you can imagine what my copy of this book must look like. Are you a tabber as well? Have you ever read anything by Ariel Lawhon? I had not read anything by her until I read this book, and I loved it. Ok, I get it. Stop gushing about my love of the book and get into the review already.
” Memory is a wicked thing that warps and twists. But paper and ink receive the truth without emotion, and they read it back without partiality. That, I believe, is why so few women are taught to read and write. God only knows what they would do with the power of pen and ink at their disposal”.
This quote above comes from Martha at the start of the story. Martha is a woman who keeps a journal, or diary, if you will, of everything that goes on in her world, right down to the weather. Oddly enough, it is rare for a woman of this time period to be able to read or write, let alone always have the materials on hand to do so. Truly, it makes sense since she is The go-to Midwife in her area. She likes to keep track of her patients, their ailments, and the children they bring into the world. This journal really is how this book came to be, and I remember reading the author’s note where Ariel Lawhon said that this story is seventy-five percent true and the other twenty-five percent is fiction.
In this story, we are following Martha Ballard, a woman in her fifties, a wife, a mother, and the town’s midwife. The story takes place in the late 1700s, but we also flash back to bits of Martha’s past from thirty-five years prior to this time. Martha is a woman who never planned on becoming a midwife, but one night long ago, when she was a young woman and mother, she was called to a birth by the old midwife in town. Little did Martha know that this midwife needed her to deliver the baby because she was no longer able to see properly. The older midwife walked Martha through the delivery, and from then on, she taught Martha everything she knew about delivering babies and midwifery. This is how Martha Ballard became a midwife herself. It turns out the older midwife saw something in Martha that she did not see in herself. Martha really took to loving the work from that point on. Ephraim, her husband, always encouraged and supported her and helped out with their children.
The story starts with Martha delivering a baby through the night and settling in on the floor in front of the fire in that same home to rest for the remainder of the night. It isn’t long however, before she is awoken, there has been a body pulled from the frozen river. Martha is needed in town to determine if this body has died simply from the cold and drowning or if there was foul play at work in the death of this young man. The thing about the man who was pulled from the river is that he was recently accused of raping the minister’s wife, Rebecca Foster, while her husband was in the city. Joshua raped Rebecca in her own home with her children asleep in the next room. Captain Joshua Burgess, however, is not the only man accused of raping this woman, but there is also another man accused, and one that is a powerful man in the town; he happens to be the local judge and Colonel; his name is Joseph North. * I want to include a bit of a sidenote here based on the true facts of what happened to Rebecca from the author’s note in the back of the book. Rebecca was indeed raped, but it was not by two men. It was actually by three different men, and they sexually assaulted her three different times over the period of one week.* What Martha decides is that Joshua was, in fact, murdered based on the bruising that covers his body and the way that his neck was snapped. It is important to know that at this time, the little town in Maine does not have a doctor, but oddly enough, one appears while Martha carefully inspects the corpse. Is this perfect timing or possibly suspicious timing since the Judge has also been accused of rape but remains alive? The doctor determines that Joshua was not murdered but simply drowned. Martha strongly disagrees and believes it to be murder. Throughout the story, we watch Martha as she carefully tries to uncover the truth about who killed Joshua, even though one might think that it is Rebecca’s husband getting revenge for what Joshua did to his wife.
Things in the town only get more difficult as the winter goes on, and the incompetent Dr. Page remains. Dr. Page is a young, arrogant man who will not be bested by an uneducated woman, especially since he is a Harvard Medical graduate. Martha begins to lose some patients to this man, but sadly, it does not turn out well for those patients. Not only does the difficulty over the winter involve the good doctor (insert sarcasm), but it also has to do with the lead-up to the hearing of Rebecca’s case and everything that goes along with it. Just because this story takes place in a small town, it does not mean that all the townspeople are kind and supportive of one another. Some of the characters in this story are awful people, but then again, some are very kind-hearted. There is a lot of gossip that goes on, along with some scheming to get people out of town before the hearing for Rebecca takes place.
I really enjoyed this story and learning about Martha as a mom, wife, and midwife. Martha suffered some tragic things throughout her lifetime but not once did it make her a poisonous woman, and honestly, I can not say that I would have held up as well as she did. Martha was a strong woman who knew her mind and was unafraid to share it. She had incredible courage during her time, and I simply could not stop reading about her. However, not only do we learn about Martha, her family, and her life, but we are also introduced to some wonderful side characters. I feel that the author did a great job of portraying more than just the terrible crime in this story but also the day-to-day life of the people in the town. One character outside Martha’s family that really stands out to me is a young, single, unwed mother forced to live at home with her folks and baby. No matter the rumors that are spread about her and the shame that she faces for having a child out of wedlock, it does not dampen her spirits or hold her up at home without facing the townsfolk. Her strength is truly incredible for the time, and I very much enjoyed getting to know her as a character.
Reader, if you are looking for a historical fiction and mystery book set in a small town in the winter, then absolutely pick this one up because I do not think that you will be disappointed. I am a seasonal reader, and for me, this book was absolutely perfect to read at the end of winter, with the snow still flying in the small town where I reside. The vibes were perfection, not to mention the quotes. As I said above, I tabbed, highlighted, and marked this book up because I could not help myself. Reader, even if you are not a seasonal reader but just a reader in general and have picked this one up, please give me your thoughts on it because I absolutely loved it. I am going to leave you with one more quote from Martha, which I feel can be relevant to many, and it is as follows: “If I am being honest- it is because these markings of ink and paper will one day be the only proof that I have existed in this world. That I lived and breathed. That I loved a man and the many children he gave me. It is not that I want to be remembered, per se. I have done nothing remarkable. Not by the standards of history, at least. But I am here. And these words are the mark I will leave behind. So yes, it matters that I continue this ritual”. So Reader, until next time, Happy Reading.
Trigger Warnings:
- Rape
- Murder
- Drowning
- Death
- Racisms
- Sexism
- Death of Children
- Violence