Book Choice: Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon – A Chilling Mystery with a Fiery Heroine‍

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The month of July is Historical Fiction, and the Chamber has picked a popular Good Morning America selection.  Ariel Lawhorn does not deliver a typical romantic historical novel featuring a young heroine ingenue.  Rather, her main character, Martha Ballard, is a 54-year old women of 35 years’ marriage and 9 children, a midwife who delivered 1,000 babies without losing one mother.  Despite her busy life, in that real-life she wrote a detailed diary not only of births, but deaths, scandals, and gossip in small-town Maine.   Not only does she perform birthing, but serves in other ways a s general medic treating injuries, undertaking small surgeries, and conducting autopsies.

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A disputed autopsy of a well-regarded townsman found dead in a freezing river pitches Martha against the Establishment. She does not believe that the death was an accident, especially in the context of recent alleged rapes in the villages.

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Join us July 22 to delve into an engaging story of true-life New England c. 1786.

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