The Frozen River an Imaginative Look at Martha Ballard

 

 The Frozen River (2023)

By Ariel Lawhon

Doubleday, 433 pages

★★★★★

 

What do we really know about the everyday lives of 18^th century settlers in remote areas New England? Most recorded history is about the high and the mighty. We know a bit more about everyday life in Hallowell, Maine because Martha Ballard, a midwife and healer, was taught to write by her husband Ephraim. She kept a journal that remained obscure until historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich uncovered that journal and wrote the Bancroft- and Pulitzer Prize-wining A Midwife’s Tale in 1990.

 

Novelist Ariel Lawhon draws upon Ulrich, but only as the springboard for an imaginative novel that takes us inside 18^th- century Hallowell, a close-to-the-margins village of sawyers, shopkeepers, farmers, mill workers, and tradespeople. The Frozen River of her book's title is the Kennebec, which does indeed freeze in the winter. If you know anything about northern New England you know that winters are long and deep. Lawhon parses parts of Ballard’s journal, including a rape accusation against high officials. Lawhon’s intent is not to dramatize actual history, though she's amazingly accurate and  illustrates the subordinate role of women before and just after the American Revolution. Martha Ballard, her heroine, is opinionated, assertive, and outspoken to a fault.

 

If you wonder how that’s possible, remember that Martha Ballard lived many decades after the Salem witch trials, hence midwives such as she and a mysterious free woman of color called Doctor (for her healing powers) were no longer in danger of being prosecuted as witches. Still, they remained part of a deeply gendered social system.

 

Martha and Ephraim have a rare companionate marriage that produced nine children, five of whom survived to adulthood. Big trouble begins in 1789, when the body of Joshua Burgess is pulled from the icy Kennebec. Judge Joshua North is quick to rule it an accidental drowning. How convenient for him who, along with Burgess stood accused of ravishing Rebecca Foster. Martha notes that wounds to the head and rope burns around Burgess’ neck indicate that he was murdered before being dumped into the river.

 

The Frozen River takes a hard look at those of standing versus plebeian society. North calls upon Doctor Benjamin Page, an arrogant young Harvard grad whose opinions exceed his skill. He sides with North, as do other men of substance. Does it matter if they are autocrats or liars? Will they prevail, or will they pay for their iniquities?

 

The Frozen River becomes a cat-and-mouse drama in the dead of winter. Lawhon immerses us so deeply that we come to know the personalities and sentiments of everyone in Hallowell. We quaff an ale at the local tavern, listen to gossip, buy luxuries such as cakes of ink, chop ice from the mill wheel, form alliances, weigh the economic dangers of said alliances, and learn quite a bit about the often gruesome yet heroic practice of midwifery. Martha's journal plays an important part in the story, but not always in the ways that you might expect. Through strategic departures from Ulrich’s scholarly work Lawhon fashions a drama that feels like a dress rehearsal for Peyton Place.

 

We are also cognizant of how religion and morality are woven into the social fabric. For example, when Lydia North begs Martha for a tonic to relieve her debilitating headaches, should Martha practice Christian charity, or allow the wife of a crooked judge to suffer the fate her husband inflicts upon others? Should men who impregnate their conquests wed them even if they have no interest in doing so?

 

Lawhon uses a lot of very clever metaphors throughout the book to focus her themes. Knowledge and gender versus male meddling is symbolized via Martha and Dr. Page.  Reminders that the world her characters inhabit remains (at best) half wild shines through sightings of a rare silver fox, a disobedient horse, and a "pet" falcon. Even comeuppances–as satisfying as they might or might not be–are as unforgiving as the weather and river that encircles Hallowell. 

 

I adored this book, but I again emphasize that much of what we read is fictional. Among other things, that’s why Paul Revere gets a cameo. This is, however, a rare novel in which both the fictional re-imagination of Martha Ballard and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s prize-winning non-fictional take on her are equally magnificent.

 

Rob Weir