Some of us enjoy hobbies that once were essential women’s work – sewing, quilting, knitting, gardening, canning. We love the printed word, and many of us attempt to describe our loved ones, neighbors, colleagues, and celebrities in our own words. We write, read, and discuss because these activities help us think about and connect with other people and times.

So of course we had to read Frozen River, and experience the mostly-grueling, occasionally joyous daily life of 18th-century housewife, midwife/healer, and diarist Martha Ballard, in rural Hallowell, Maine (most of which is now part of modern Portland). We could relate to the fact that six of the surviving children she and her husband Cyrus produced brought both joy and consternation. We were impressed that midwife Martha delivered hundreds of neighbors’ babies and cared for their mothers– both for needed income and because this was her extraordinary talent. To do so, she sometimes walked or rode a horse through miles of mud or deep snow, and over the ever-dangerous Kennebec River.

The plot centers on two crimes: 1) the murder of a man many thought “went missing” one winter, but whose body was discovered in the river during the spring thaw. Why was he murdered, and by whom? 2) the rape of the minister’s wife by three local men, when the minister was away. As happened countless times throughout history, many townspeople saw this woman as a hussy who brought trouble on herself. Will all perpetrators be brought to justice? Read it and find out, while also feeling the weight of some social norms and dreadful human behavior, and also exploring timeless topics like sexuality, gender roles, law versus informal justice, simple celebrations, grim hardship, and inspiring resilience.

Author Airel Lawhon acknowledged background research conducted by historian/ MacArthur Fellow / 300 th Harvard University Professor Emerita and Cambridge resident Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. “Acknowledge” is an understatement. Professor Ulrich spent countless hours doing meticulous detective work to find, read, carefully analyze, and finally interpret Martha Ballard’s diary. Her biography of Martha, A Midwife’s Tale, won the Pulitzer Prize for History. I highly recommend that before you read Frozen River, you read Ulrich’s book or watch the documentary by the same title (on Amazon Prime and Apple TV). Here’s 3-minute YouTube trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL2IITKW8Rg

Both book and documentary chronicle the interwoven stories of two remarkable women: 18th-century Martha Ballard and historian Laura Thatcher Ulrich. It will give you much to think about how historians work and how novelists bring history to life for a broad swath of readers. It will give you a lot to consider about the strong, intelligent women who persevered despite disease, miserable weather, and sometimes miserable men, to produce the current generation of resilient and thoughtful New England women.
~Janis Gogan