The Frozen River
Ariel Lawhon, 2023
Historical fiction Mystery, thriller & crimeContemporary fiction
A Maine midwife in 1789, armed with a diary and a stubborn appetite for justice, asks questions about a body the town would rather the ice kept. It reads as a cold, lyrical historical mystery, with a stubborn midwife's voice, steady dread, and flashes of wry family warmth.
Feels like dread and serenity. About freedom and family.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy historical crime anchored in ordinary work, family life, and a woman who keeps asking questions. If you want a light, cozy mystery, the steady dread and grim questions about a body may not suit.
Why read it
It offers a grounded, suspenseful look at justice and memory through a real midwife's world, with a wintry atmosphere that stays with you.
A page from the book
A winter about to be named, and no one in town knows it yet.
The great freeze has come a month early to the town of Hallowell, Maine, and—the dead man could not know this, nor could anyone who lives here—the thaw will not arrive for many, many long months. They will call this the Year of the Long Winter. It will become legend, and he, no small part of it. For now, however, they sleep safe and warm in their beds, doors shut tight against an early, savage winter. But there—along the riverbank, if you look closely—something dark and agile moves in the moonlight. A fox. Tentative, she sets one paw onto the ice. Then another. She hesitates, for she knows how fickle the river can be, how it longs to swallow everything and pull it into the churning depths. But the ice holds, and the fox inches forward, toward the dead man. Ariel Lawhon.Her narrator is Martha Ballard, a real Maine midwife whose 10,000-entry diary (1785–1812) became the basis of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale.
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Frozen River for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy historical crime anchored in ordinary work, family life, and a woman who keeps asking questions. If you want a light, cozy mystery, the steady dread and grim questions about a body may not suit.
- What is The Frozen River like?
- It reads as a cold, lyrical historical mystery, with a stubborn midwife's voice, steady dread, and flashes of wry family warmth. Feels like dread and serenity. About freedom and family.
- What should I read after The Frozen River?
- If you liked The Frozen River, try Butcher & Blackbird (Brynne Weaver), Before We Were Yours (Lisa Wingate) and Pretty Girls (Karin Slaughter).
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What a woman weighs before she turns a man down.
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Pretty Girls · Karin Slaughter
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