The Frozen River was one of the best historical fiction novels I have read in a while. Based on the diary of a real midwife in the late 1700’s it tells the story of Martha Ballard and her husband Ephraim, their family, and the small town in Maine they live in. The emphasis of the novel was on the laws of the time and how justice (if you can call it that) was meted out and how women were treated. Martha was an adamant women’s libber almost to the point of endangering her life and her husband was one of the smartest and kindest men you could imagine. While there is a mysterious death; the book is more about how women were treated, and how greed, corruption in government, and corrupt government officials have always been around and how a woman back then could sometimes get justice.