The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

GMA Book Club Pick • New York Times Bestseller

Step into the bitter cold of 1789 Maine, where a frozen river holds a deadly secret and one woman’s courage will defy an entire community.

When the Kennebec River yields the body of a prominent gentleman encased in ice, midwife Martha Ballard is called upon to determine how he died. In a time when women’s voices were meant to be silent, Martha’s meticulous diary has become an unflinching record of her town’s most intimate moments—every birth, every death, every whispered scandal. Months before this frozen discovery, she documented a brutal assault by two respected men. Now one of them is dead, and the other’s fate hangs in the balance.

But when a male physician dismisses her findings as mere accident, Martha must pursue justice on her own terms. As winter deepens and the trial approaches, her investigation threatens to unravel the carefully maintained facades of Hallowell’s most powerful families—including those she holds dear.

Ariel Lawhon, the acclaimed author of I Was Anastasia and Code Name Hélène, brings to life an extraordinary woman history nearly forgot. Fans of Outlander‘s Claire Fraser will find a kindred spirit in Martha—brave, principled, and unwilling to let injustice stand unchallenged. This is historical fiction at its finest: a taut mystery wrapped around a tender portrait of resilience, woven from the actual diary entries of a remarkable 18th-century healer.

Rich with period detail and crackling with tension, The Frozen River is an unforgettable tale of one woman’s fight for truth in a world determined to silence her.

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