In November 1789, midwife and healer Martha Ballard is summoned to determine the cause of death of a man entombed in Maine’s frozen Kennebec River. Her profession ensures she is more aware than most of the intimate lives of her close-knit community of Hallowell. Ballard keeps a diary, in which she not only records births and deaths, but also any crimes brought to her attention. She had noted the dead man’s name months earlier as one of two alleged rapists of a local woman. Ballard declares the death a murder, but when the town’s new physician disagrees, she decides to investigate alone. From the striking opening scene describing the frozen body to the thrilling showdown and delivery of justice – in several forms – months later, this dramatic narrative powers along as sure and strong as the Kennebec itself.
A bestselling author of historical fiction, Lawhon has always taken pride in sticking closely to fact. The Frozen River is inspired by real events rather than based on them, making it her first deviation from “biographical fiction”. She alters dates and events to suit her narrative, yet Martha Ballard (who delivered more than 1,000 babies in her career without losing a mother in childbirth) and her diaries were very real. It was unusual for a woman in Ballard’s situation to be literate, making her decades of record-keeping even more remarkable. Lawhon’s Martha regards her diary as a form of safekeeping, a chronicle of facts not feelings: “Memory is a wicked thing that warps and twists. But paper and ink receive the truth without emotion, and they read it back without impartiality.”
The imagery is consistently imaginative and period-specific (“the light feels weak and sickly, as though sifted through old cheesecloth”) and Martha’s character and her relationship with her community and family make for compelling reading. The research underpinning The Frozen River is impressively extensive, though the serving sizes can be large, such as passages about the ratification of the constitution or the workings of the legal system.
Martha Ballard’s life and legacy are impressive. She was great-aunt to Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, and great-great-grandmother of one of America’s first female physicians. Through fiction, Lawhon celebrates and honours a memorable, and very real, woman.
