“To name a thing is a proprietary act. It is a commitment. Of ownership or care or loyalty. It means something. With that single word I have declared that this little beast is mine, and that I have a responsibility to protect her.”
While the quote refers to a silver fox, the importance of names and those who provide those names is a constant in Ariel Lawhon’s The Frozen River (Doubleday 2023). Set in 1789 Maine, the novel follows Martha Ballard, a wife, mother and midwife. The novel opens with the birth of a baby and the discovery of a body. Martha, as part of her duties as midwife, is called in to inspect the body and provide identification, if she can. And she can. It is Joshua Burgess, one of two men accused of raping the preacher’s wife. From her investigation of the body, she determines he was murdered. The other man accused of raping Rebecca Foster is Colonel North, the local judge who Martha will have to present her findings to.
Martha’s testimony and her staunch support of Rebecca have put her squarely in Colonel North’s line of sight. When his attempts to bully her are unsuccessful, he employs other means to threaten her into silence – bringing her children into the investigation by accusing her eldest of the murder of Joshua Burgess. As if the murder investigation and court proceedings weren’t enough, Colonel North has brought in some fancy doctor to dispute Martha’s findings and push her out of the community. The doctor, full of pomp and misplaced confidence, had never delivered a baby prior to arriving. As the loyalties of the town are divided, more women turn to him. Much to their detriment.
The novel is inspired by the real Martha Ballard and an actual court case involving the rape of a woman. Many of the diary entries that appear in Lawhon’s novel are from Martha’s diary, her brief observations serving as evidence and historical record. Lawhon explains in her note that the actual case involved three men over the course of several days, but she elected to make it one day and only two men for both her sake and that of the reader.
Frozen River is a fantastic novel, both in the story itself and in the storytelling.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 