BookLife Review: The Frozen River, (Ariel Lawhon, author) by Carol O’Day

Historical fiction, literary fiction, Maine late 1700s, murder mystery, midwifery, Kennebec River, logging, taverns, horseback riding, rape, colonial courts

Maine, murder and midwifery all feature prominently in this historical fiction novel that also is a riveting mystery. Martha Ballard is a fifty-four year old midwife in the Maine town of Hallowell, situated along the Kennebec River in Maine. The story opens in 1789 and flutters occasionally back in time by years or a couple decades to provide context. It is a riveting read. This is one of those books which you will want to read late into the night, and perhaps for which you will forgo other tasks or plans.

One of the wonderful hallmarks of much historical fiction is that the story can unfold without the aid (or interference) of computers, smartphones or even DNA science. While those tools serve many functions in life, they can also undermine what otherwise can be a slowly unfolding mystery that depends on wit and cunning and the face-to-face interaction of people in their social environments. In Hallowell, Maine in 1789, life revolved around family, farming, logging, childbirth, and the local general store and tavern. The town was small, with fewer than 1500 inhabitants so most residents were known to one another, for better or worse.

The local doctor, or midwife as the case may be, was privy to the life of the town, (literally ushering it into being) and many of the heartaches and secrets folded into small town life-unplanned pregnancies, pregnancy before marriage, stillborn babies, illness, infidelity, and even rape. Like many small towns, for most of its existence Hallowell had never had a trained medical physician and relied heavily on its local midwives for their health care needs. The fledgling judicial system of the newly minted United States that governed the colonies represented pockets of power and influence and was tainted with its own measure of corruption. In late 18th century New England, there existed a custom of delaying “going to housekeeping” or co-habitating following marriage. The new bride would remain at her parents home for a period of weeks or months to gather the goods necessary to set up a new home while the new husband built or secured it. This custom had the added “benefit” of ensuring that the bride was not pregnant with child at the time of the marriage (for which the woman, not the man, was publicly prosecuted and fined), and assured the husband that any children issuing from the marriage were his. Women were not automatically taught to read and were encouraged to train themselves in the domestic arts. This speaks not only of a Puritanical belief in no pre-marital sex and the regular violation of that rule.

Martha Ballard is a veteran midwife. Martha and her husband, Ephraim, had nine children of their own, three of whom died in the diphtheria epidemic that swept their native home of Oxford, Massachusetts in 1769. Martha and Ephraim married when she was 19 and he was several years her senior. It was Ephraim who taught Martha to read and encouraged her to keep a daily journal. An elderly midwife trained her as a midwife when her own eyesight began to fail. When the couple moved from Massachusetts to Maine as their family grew, they leased riverfront land in Hallowell from a local judge and logging company and were on the cusp of being confirmed permanent tenants in 1789.

When a local man is discovered dead and frozen in the river, Martha is summoned by the local townsmen to assess the body for the cause of death, before the town’s new, pompous Harvard educated physician can arrive at the scene. Dr. Page was mistrusted by the locals due to his association with a malicious and greedy local judge. Martha quickly determines that the deceased was one of two men that had been publicly accused of raping a minister’s wife. He had been beaten and hung before being tossed in the freezing river. The other man accused in the rape was the local town’s judge.

The suspects, accusations and arrests escalate as the story unfolds and the connections between the rape allegations, the dead man in the ice, the local judge and unlawful property grabs become clearer. Lawhon intersperses the intrigue with the backstory of Martha and her family, their tragedies, their grown children’s romances and dalliances, and the ceaseless onslaught of births in this small town, calling Martha into action day and night, in the depths of winter, with cold and ice never withstanding. Author Lawhon’s work is deeply founded in the history and mores of the late 18th Century in New England, and its pages sing with rich historical detail. She describes the cakes of ink Ephraim secures for his wife’s journals from Boston, the way quills are made from feathers, the wildlife on the farm—foxes, chickens, horses and even a pet falcon, the multitude of herbs and syrups Martha creates in her workroom for use in her healing practices, hand-dipping of candles, bartering for goods and gossip at the general store, and the particular knives, saws, aprons and waterwheels that power the mill.

Adding this novel to your shelves will not disappoint. Reading it will elevate your understanding of colonial New England, midwifery, lumber harvesting and transport, horsemanship, public taverns and colonial courts of justice. It doesn’t hurt that there is a cameo reference and connection to the famous Paul Revere, a friend of Ephraim’s and the maker of Martha’s inkwell. Details like these and so many more guarantee a satisfying read, as will the ultimate, though graphic, delivery of justice at its end.

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