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babewiththepower.bsky.social · @babewiththepower.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated The Frozen River 8/10

In looking to take advantage more of programming from my local library system, I found a book club that thanks to it I read this book. I saw what the next book for discussion was, thought the premise was really interesting especially since I've often enjoyed the historical fiction genre, and picked up a copy.<br/><br/>Although I enjoy the genre, I very rarely actively look for books from it and honestly had never heard of this author. I gather now that she's written several other books and considering how much I enjoyed this one, I'll have to make it a point to find them.<br/><br/>The fiction part hung on what the author explains at the end of the book really are those very bare-bones real journal/diary entries included within the story. I really liked that they were placed at the end of a chapter or series of chapters that were filled with characters and events that were then condensed down to those entries. It's great that their real-life brevity left so much room to create a whole world.<br/><br/>That's really what I found the most page-turning. I picked up the book thinking it might be a thriller/whodunit/mystery and it turned out to not really be that. But as credit to the enthralling writing I didn't realize not much had happened, per se, until I was halfway through the book. Of course I wanted to know whodunit/how it happened, but it became a side story to all this other colorful world of Martha's.<br/><br/>A note of which I must say, it's kind of a shame to say that a woman's assault, the resolution of a murder, and the ultimate result of the justice system is a side story. As we ended up discussing at the book club meeting, there's many things that are awful about how women moved about the world - or didn't - and how they were _allowed_ to be respected in the 1700s, but on the other hand there's a lot of things that are very much the same as today.<br/><br/>Women still aren't treated as credible witnesses to their own assaults, many men get away with it, and, most shameful of all, most of them get away with it because despite most of us carrying recording devices in our pockets and presenting visible evidence of assailants and the crime, that's often still not enough. Victims are still run through the ringer while shamed and repeatedly retraumatized, often for naught. So many would be so lucky to see the result fictionalized in this book.<br/><br/>Would recommend for anyone who enjoys historical fiction and an engrossing well-written world build full of interesting three dimensional characters.

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Published 2026-08-18 17:58 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere