The Frozen River is a 2023 novel by Ariel Lawhon. Wow, a helluva read, very gripping; the action doesn’t let up. So vividly written, it’s almost believable.
Set in 1789-90 Maine, pretty rough country, centering upon Martha Ballard, a real person (1735-1812), a midwife, who left a copious journal. And this mystery tale is, more or less, rooted in actual events. (Spoilers ahead.)
Yet Martha here is just too good to be true. Likewise her husband Ephraim Ballard. A 21st century man in the 18th. Their love affair and marriage are too good to be true. Likewise their children (pretty much).
Then there’s Joseph North. The converse of too good to be true; a cartoon villain that makes your skin crawl. Rich, an esteemed colonel, a judge, and a slimeball. Even his dog is vicious. Among other sins, he schemes to steal the Ballards’ property. But this is not a noire novel, so the reader expects some justice in the end.
The story starts with a body found under the river ice, Joshua Burgess. Evidently murdered. He’d been credibly accused, together with North, of raping the parson’s wife.
The other bad guy is Doctor Page. A conceited jerk and medical disaster. But that was par for the course — medicine in those days was worse than primitive. Page contradicts the clear evidence that Burgess was murdered. His attendance at two birthings results in dead children. In another case, Page, over Martha’s vociferous objections, doses a mother in childbirth with Laudanum. Martha saves her life. But then Page claims it was Martha who, over his objections, gave the woman the near-fatal dose.
Why lie like that, when the patient in question could easily refute it? Perhaps that’s just my 21st century thinking. Women in those times were given little credence.
Also implausible: Burgess taking the trouble to tie his hair back during each of two rapes. What, the women just lay there patiently waiting? But this strange detail actually proved important to Martha’s crime-solving.
It also made no sense to me that North would, with full intent, commit a rape. A man in his position risking that? Arrogantly thinking he had impunity? And why involve Burgess, potentially a witness against him? One initially supposed North had a hand in Burgess’s subsequent murder; but that seemed similarly riskily implausible. Then it appeared North’s plan was to buy off Burgess. However, in a Faulknerian twist, we finally learn North’s actual thinking was that no one would believe a woman claiming rape by two men.
I’ve written before about the death penalty in books and popular culture. Auteurs who staunchly oppose capital punishment nevertheless apply it remorselessly in their works. It’s the human sense for justice. The rule seems to be that routine miscreants don’t get the death penalty, it’s only particularly nasty characters. Doctor Page here, for all his awfulness, didn’t quite make the cut. He does get a comeuppance from Martha, but really gets off pretty easy.
Then there’s North.
Comes a climactic scene where Martha, after a long brutal day, thrown from her horse, finally staggers painfully home alone and finds her nemesis North (with dog) awaiting her there. This will not end prettily.
North snarls that she’s going to get what the parson’s wife got. (He’d by now wriggled out of that charge.) But the reader remembers multiple mentions of an especially sharp knife which the Ballards had foreshadowingly named “Revenge” — and sees what’s coming. When North drops his pants, we know it for sure.
Not quite capital punishment, but close enough.
Husband Ephraim arrives the next moment; he and Martha ruefully deign to stanch the bleeding; then he dumps North, barely alive, at Doctor Page’s. I thought they should have dumped him in the river. Too big a risk leaving that snake alive, with such a giant grudge. But this is, again, not a noire novel. Martha and Ephraim too good to be true.