Review: The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon, beautifully crafted historical fiction

 I really liked this one, which again was recommended to me by a colleague who seems to have my taste in books nailed. There is a crime at the heart of The Frozen River but what stayed with me was how thoughtful and rich the novel is. It is a historical novel with weight and a main character so well drawn that she feels real. 

The story is set in 1789 along the frozen banks of the Kennebec River in Maine. A man’s body is discovered trapped in the ice and the local midwife and healer, Martha Ballard, is called to examine the body and determine the cause of death. That man turns out to be someone recently accused of a brutal crime of sexual violence which Martha had documented in her long kept diary. She tries to understand what has happened and comes to believe that the man's murder and the earlier crime are related. So, the novel does unfold the mystery but it is far more a hisotical novel that investigates the reality of life in these earlier times. 

I was drawn to Martha from the very start. She feels vivid and real. She is a woman who is shaped by her calling and her strong commitment to her family and her community. I could picture her coming through snow, carrying her healing bag, tending to births, and supporting women. I think for me it was that sense of Martha as a living person that really carried the novel.

The book is dense in a satisfying way. It asks hard questions about justice, gender, power, and who gets heard when the law claims to be blind. These are all issues that still exist today.  Lawhon was inspired by the real Martha Ballard, an actual midwife whose diaries recorded decades of births, deaths, and community events. She uses that historical material to build a fictionalised crime story that feels honest to the time, the place, and the challenges Martha would have faced.

One of the clearest things the book shows is how women navigate the constraining rules of the time. these limits. Martha, and the other women around her, are constantly balancing survival with duty. Their intelligence and authority authority often go unrecognised by the men and institutions around them. The novel quietly underlines how their labour, including midwifery, domestic work, emotional care, and even chronicling history in diaries, is undervalued but is also essential to the community’s life.

Even though I sometimes struggled to picture the frozen landscape (I am in Sydney Australia afterall and have only seen snow a handful of times), the depth of the characters and the subtle commentary on women’s roles left a strong impression.

4 stars: I really enjoyed it - highly recommended.