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With the celebrity book club picks, I am never sure if I’ll really enjoy them or not. And pretty much none are even close to clean reading, with most being high on my ratings scale. But I’ve wanted to give them ratings for content at the very least to get them here on the site for my readers’ informational purposes. (That means I almost always get Kindle versions so I can do an easy and quick search for profanity and sexual content.)
With this pick from the Good Morning America book club, I ended up getting a hardcover copy from my library. I figured I’d give it a (slower) scan throughout for some content to give it a Rapid Rating.
But then as I started just skimming, I very quickly started reading in earnest. And I was hooked. I could never put it down. Sure, it was due at the library so I was on a time crunch, but I also got completely absorbed. The story, the characters, the setting, the beautiful writing. And all the births were fascinating! I loved reading about the midwifery.
The Frozen River is set in Maine in 1789 and 1790, during six months of a very cold winter when the river in the town of Hallowell is frozen and people can walk over it. The main character, Martha Ballard, is a midwife in her 50s and mother of nine children, six living. In fact, Martha is a real woman, and her biography, A Midwife’s Tale, won its author, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a Pulitzer Prize. I didn’t realize this going in, though I had heard of that book.
I’d only read that this novel is billed as a mystery, with a big part of the story being the question of who killed a man found in the river at the beginning of the book. The man had been accused of raping a woman in town. Because Martha kept a diary in which she noted basic facts of every day of her life, that diary became useful in the trial.
So the story is a mystery, and because the legal system at the time was what I would call “trying to find its feet,” and of course because it was the 1700s and women were not exactly listened to, the legal system doesn’t pursue the case as it should have. That means Martha sets her mind to solving the mystery herself and trying to find some kind of justice.
Yes, so there’s a mystery. But the book is really Martha’s story, fleshed out in the way author Ariel Lawhon sees it. And it’s all based on Martha Ballard’s diary, with only a few deviations, as Lawhon explains in detail at the end.
Martha is a fierce, strong, determined woman; she’s smart, skilled, and experienced. And compassionate. I loved her relationship with her husband; he is supportive in every way and their love is tender and warm, beautifully settled-in after 35 years of being together. As I already mentioned, there are many births, and the descriptions of how she attended them so interesting. Especially so was what she did when there were complications (today, a surgeon would just rush in and do a C-section). The medically-curious me was fascinated.
All in all, The Frozen River is excellent historical fiction, with many threads of plot weaving together to make a full and so very satisfying story.
Rated: Moderate. Profanity includes one use of strong language, 15 instances of moderate profanity, 25 uses of mild language, and 15 instances of the name of Deity in vain. There’s one instance of British (bl-) profanity. Sexual content includes numerous references to sex, some between husband and wife and some between young unmarried people (but hardly any detail past kissing and moving some clothes around/off). It relates mostly to the fact that the main character is a midwife and delivering the babies of these unions. Violence includes some hangings, references to several fights and a lot of references to rape. A woman’s rape by two men is one major plot line of the book. Several other rapes and an attempted rape are mentioned. Most of the references to it are just references, but there are a few places more is discussed. A woman defends herself by injuring a man with a knife. There is a fair amount of blood with that. There are a lot of baby deliveries, some with some mentions of blood and bodily fluids, etc., as a note for very squeamish readers.
Click here to purchase your copy of The Frozen River on Amazon.
