Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly.
Nicole Ransome: Hi, I'm Audible Editor Nicole, and I'm excited to chat with bestselling author Ariel Lawhon, author of Code Name Hélène, and her new historical fiction mystery, The Frozen River. Welcome, Ariel.
Ariel Lawhon: Thank you so much for having me.
NR: It's good to have you. So, The Frozen River is told from the first-person POV of a midwife, Martha Ballard, who is a very observant and wise character. She also happens to be a real midwife within history that kept journals of her journeys and work. What pushed you to write a story based upon her life?
AL: I found Martha Ballard's story actually about 15 years ago. I was in a doctor's office, I was pregnant with my fourth son, and my doctor was late for an appointment. And I'd read everything in the waiting room—the book I brought with me, all the magazines. And I found a devotional hidden under a stack of scary pamphlets in the office. And I opened it to that day, it was August 8, 2008. And it told the story of a woman named Martha Ballard. She really lived, she was a midwife in the late 1700s, and she had delivered over 1,000 babies in the course of her career and never lost a mother. And I remember sitting there in that doctor's office, pregnant myself, thinking how extraordinary that was. My doctor that I was waiting on couldn't boast a record like that. And he had all of modern medicine at his disposal. And yet this woman hundreds of years ago was so skilled she never lost a mother in childbirth. And I thought, “That would make a great novel.”
NR: It definitely does. What was it like reading and writing from her perspective through the journals she left behind?
AL: So, she kept a diary for 30 years, her entire midwifery career. And in that diary, she recorded everything, mostly her day-to-day life. So, most of her diary is very dry. It's almost like a day book—the date, the weather, what she cooked for dinner, whether or not she was at home. But sprinkled throughout, over the course of 30 years, are stories of births and deaths and murder. And in it is also the only record of a rape trial that happened in the late 1700s. And so I took two things. I took that rape trial and murder and combined them together into this story.
NR: That is really interesting. What was it like the first time reading about that rape trial?
AL: It's so sad. It is so sad. Because, I mean, history hasn't changed much, right? We're still reading about similar trials. This was fascinating, though, because it took place at a point in American history where we barely had anything of a cohesive legal system. The Supreme Court sat the bench for the first time during the year that this story takes place. The Bill of Rights had not yet been ratified. The legal system was so scattered and so bare bones that it was really interesting to write about a trial during that time and to have numerous courtroom scenes that take place not in courthouses, as we're accustomed to, but in taverns or in meeting halls, as it was back then. And it was a fascinating take, because we don't tend to remember that our legal system took time to get where it is and what would it look like to have a trial when it was barely [a system] at all.
NR: Well, since this is based off of an actual story within her journal, besides Martha, were there any other characters that were based on actual people?
AL: Almost everyone in the book is real. It is either a townsperson or one of Martha's family members. She's married at the time of this story. She's been married for 35 years. She has six children, and they live and work in the small community of Hallowell, Maine, where almost the entire story takes place. It is over a six-month period of time in one very long, hard, cold winter. And I would say 99 percent of the people you meet on the page really existed in real life.
NR: Wow. I actually did not know that. That is a great piece of information. What kind of reading or research did you do about Martha Ballard to prepare to write about her?
AL: That is a great question. There are actually shockingly few resources about Martha Ballard. There are a grand total of two books. The diary that Martha herself wrote, in which she chronicled 30 years of her life, and a biography by a woman named Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. It is called A Midwife's Tale. It was published in 1992, I believe, by Knopf. And it won the Pulitzer Prize later that year for history. But it is a thorough, intricate biography of her life. Not just her day-to-day life, but in the context of the era in which she lived. And it is phenomenal reading.
"If not for the diary she kept herself, she would have been gone, written out, never known...So, you can say in a very real sense, Martha wrote herself into American history."
So, between those two documents, the biography about her and her actual diary itself, that is where I was able to pull everything together. But the Martha you meet on the page is entirely fictional. There's nothing that records her personality or her inner-thought life. Even her diary is very sparse. So, the woman you meet on the page is my creation. She's my idea of who this really smart, brave woman would have been.
NR: Well, because there was so much power to your pen involving her personality, was there anything else that you wanted to add to our knowledge of her as a historical figure?
AL: Yes. Martha Ballard was really extraordinary. Apart from keeping a diary at a time when most women could not read or write, apart from this extraordinary record as a midwife, she also happens to be the great-aunt of Clara Barton, who's the founder of the American Red Cross, and the great-great-grandmother of Mary Hobart, who was one of the first female physicians in the United States. So, when you take a step back and you look at Martha's life, not just what she accomplished within her own life, but the legacy she passed on is extraordinary, and we have almost lost her to history. If not for the diary she kept herself, she would have been gone, written out, never known. It was that diary that got passed down through generations that inspired Laurel Thatcher Ulrich to write her biography. So, you can say in a very real sense, Martha wrote herself into American history.
NR: I love that answer. The Frozen River is set in 1789 Maine, where women's rights were little to none. How does that affect the story you were telling?
AL: I wanted to tell this story because Martha Ballard, historically, you can look at the historical record and you see that she is a woman who defended other women. She sought justice when there was little to no justice to be found. As a midwife, she actually had this additional legal privilege that most women did not have at the time. There was a thing in place called the Law of Coverage, which meant that a woman could not testify in court without her husband or her father present unless she was a midwife and she was testifying in paternity cases. So, when you look at Martha's overall life, what she did to help women and how she defended them in court, I thought it was extraordinary because the story of human history really is in many ways the story of women taking care of each other, and it is something she did so well throughout her life.
NR: What message do you feel listeners can pull from Martha's perspective as she navigates the injustices she observes and experiences, specifically around the issues with women's rights that we're facing today?
AL: I really want people to remember, and one of the main reasons that I wrote this novel, she's not in the history books. I never learned about her in school. You're not going to find her name in textbooks that I'm aware of. To find her story, you have to go to the biography or to her own writing. But I was so struck by, over the course of her life, the small things she did in love that never made the history books, but were so important. And really, I want readers to go, "Oh, I don't have to make the newspaper. I don't have to make the history books to make a very, very real difference in the lives of others in my community." And she was living proof of that.
NR: Well, it was actually great to learn about her through your book.
AL: Thank you.
NR: The Frozen River is performed by Jane Oppenheimer, an amazing audiobook narrator. Was there something specific you were looking for in choosing the right voice for this story? What made Jane Oppenheimer's voice as Martha Ballard stand out to you?
AL: I received a list of five potential narrators, and each of them read the first chapter of the book. And that was really fun for me. That was the first time I've had narrators audition for one of my books. Previously, I've been sent a list of narrators and I can listen to them read other people's books, and I listen for the voice. But in this particular case, Jane's voice really stuck out as smart and mature. Because Martha is 54 years old in this novel. She's a mature woman in the prime of her life. And Jane really embodied that. There was a warmth to her and an intelligence that I felt personified Martha's character.
NR: So, you've written several historical fiction novels that take place in different times and locations. How do you conduct your research to make your stories feel as authentic to the times as possible?
AL: I read as much as I can. It’s the first thing that I do. When I decide on an idea, I buy as much research material as I can get my hands on. I almost never check it out from the library unless it's a book that can only be found in the library. Usually because in my research material that I buy, I am flipping through pages. I'm dog-earing them, I'm underlining them, highlighting them. Librarians frown [laughs] upon what I do to books, which is why I never get them from the library. But those marked-up pages become a roadmap for me. So, as I'm researching, I'm looking, obviously, for the big picture of what happened in this story, but I'm also looking for the small details that will make it come alive and make it real.
"The story of human history really is in many ways the story of women taking care of each other."
For instance, in my last book, my main character was known for putting on red lipstick before she went into battle. And it's something she really did. And I thought, "That's not frivolous. She's putting on her armor. This is a way that she is preparing herself." And it honestly made me think of red lipstick entirely different for the rest of my life. In Martha's case, I went through the research material and I was looking for the small threads that would build her family life, her relationship with her husband, her relationship with her children, how old they were, what the politics of her small town was.
For instance, there's one thing that keeps coming up in her diary over and over. She would continually get thrown by her horse. There's no cars. She had to ride a horse. And I thought, that is fascinating. This woman is obviously very smart and very capable, but she cannot keep her seat. And that works its way into the book at one point. So when I research, I'm looking for two things. The big picture and the small details. And the small details are exclusively the things that are interesting to me. They're how I make a person seem real on the page. And when I combine those two, hopefully the end result is not just a compelling story, but real characters.
NR: In Martha's case, were there any small details that you really wanted to include but you couldn't in the story?
AL: Things always get cut. I think there were a handful of scenes where there were interactions with her family that I thought were fascinating. Because her children are older in this story, most of them are already grown and have left the house. And I found them fascinating, but they did not necessarily connect to the overall story.
Things that I did find fascinating, however, that made their way in: One thing that just blew my mind when I was researching. We tend to think of the Puritans, or even the post-Puritans, as Martha would be, as this very pure, uptight, chaste society. And that is not at all how that worked in real life. For instance, in Martha's day, four out of 10 first pregnancies were conceived out of wedlock, which is amazing. These are the Puritans. So, 40 percent of first babies. Now, about one or two of those babies would actually be born out of wedlock. There were lots of nine-pound premature babies, shall we say, lots of shotgun weddings.
So, it just made me laugh, because mankind hasn't changed from the beginning. And Martha, she's a midwife, so she's dealing with the fact that people have sex, and sex makes babies, and her job is to birth them. Well, not birth them; help them be birthed, I should say. And it made me laugh because nothing changes, really, throughout history.
NR: History does repeat itself [laughs].
AL: Yes, it does.
NR: Do you have a favorite point and location in history you enjoy to write from the most?
AL: Oh, that's a good question. My first four books were all set in early 20th century. So, between, like, 1917 and 1945. And that's really fun. I've really enjoyed that. I took a 200-year leap backward with Martha, and it was also very fun, but really challenging. Because we're working with different technology. There are no vehicles, there is no electricity. People ride horses and use lanterns. And so I considered it a challenge to go, “Okay, how do I make this moment that's so far back feel real, feel present?” I want you to be immersed in this world where everything's different but not be bogged down with the details. So, I guess the answer would be, I tend to enjoy whatever timeframe I'm working in presently because it's both fun to learn about and also a challenge to make the reader feel comfortable in that setting.
NR: Have you always been a big lover of history?
AL: I have. And I did not realize until I took on this career that it provides me this really great opportunity to fill the gaps in my own education. Nobody makes it out with a perfect education, right? None of us learn everything, specifically about history. So it has given me the opportunity to go back and plug those holes. I've gotten to learn about jazz era New York City and the Hindenburg. I have a whole novel set entirely on the last flight of the Hindenburg. I've been immersed in the Russian Revolution. I've done World War II numerous times, and now I got to do post-Revolutionary War early America. That's Martha. And then my next one that I'm working on now is medieval Ireland. So, I get to learn and that's really fun for me.
NR: How do you choose your next story?
AL: I used to say that I chose them on accident, just going about my life. I don't know that that's true anymore. I've come to think that maybe they choose me. With every novel I've ever settled on as the book I'm going to write next, I had just been going about my life, minding my own business, and I run up across a story that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. Like, for instance, with Martha, sitting in that doctor's office. I actually came up with Martha's story before I wrote any of my other novels. And I sat there and I read about her and all the little hairs stood up on the back of my neck. In hindsight, I just needed more time. I needed more time to sit with her story before I could write it. But I wrote four others in the meantime. And in every single instance, I just stumbled across a bit of information, got captivated by it, went down a research rabbit hole, and realized there's something more here. And I just wanted to tell what that something more was.
"I want readers to go, 'Oh, I don't have to make the newspaper. I don't have to make the history books to make a very, very real difference in the lives of others in my community.'"
NR: You've also written several stories that expand upon the lives of real historical figures. Did you have a story or person outside of Martha who you've most related to?
AL: Ooh, yes. So, I mean, they're like children, right? I love them all. You can't pick a favorite. But I will say that my last novel, Code Name Hélène, the main character in that book, her name is Nancy Wake. She was a real woman, the most decorated woman of World War II. And she was astonishing. She jumped out of airplanes and cussed like a sailor, and she could drink any guy under the table. And she was bold and brassy and spoke her mind. And as far as fun, she is the most fun I have ever had writing any character. And I think it's just because she was larger than life. Her personality was huge. She was easy to write because I always knew what she would say if she could say whatever she wanted. And it was usually something that involved a few cuss words and [laughs] an insult. And we don't get to see women like that on the page a lot. We don't get to see women just let it loose. And I got to with her and that was a lot of fun.
NR: Are there any themes that you feel most drawn to when you craft a story?
AL: I always say that I never really know what the theme is until I'm done. And then I can step back and go, "Oh, oh, I understand now." Like with Martha, the theme is very much what justice can look like, how we pursue different forms of justice when real justice is denied us. With Code Name Hélène, it was very much a story about friendship, which sounds odd. It's a war story and it's a love story. But it is a story about friendship. It's a story about a woman who steps onto a battlefield and has to earn the respect of thousands of men, and how that transforms her life. In all of my novels, I can only really see what they're about in hindsight. When I'm writing it, I am so stuck in the middle I cannot see the forest for the trees.
And it's one of the most fun things for me is after the book is published and it goes out in the world and I see people's responses to what I've written. In a way it helps clarify for me what the story is actually about. Because I can never read my own work. There's a separation. My relationship to my own work is different, but when someone else reads it, it's clear. They don't know how the rabbit is smuggled into the hat and they don't know who done it. They just read a story. And I can never read my own work as a story. So, often, I look to my readers in the end to help me understand what I have written.
NR: Oh, wow. So, how did you come up with the title The Frozen River for your story about Martha?
AL: Ooh, good question. So, I'm about 50/50 on getting to keep my titles. Half the time I get to keep the one I wrote with. And then half the time the publisher says, "Oh, this doesn't work." Sometimes it's a marketing reason. Sometimes it's too similar to something else. Sometimes the sales team doesn't think it's clear enough. There could be any number of reasons. But with The Frozen River, I have to call the book something, right? I can't start a document until I've named it. It's just a weird thing with me. And I knew that I wanted to tell this story over a six-month period of time when the Kennebec River in Maine freezes solid. It's a thing that really happens to this river, not every year, but every once in a while it will just freeze solid to the point where you can walk across it in winter. And so I already knew that I was going to be writing during this period of time when the river freezes and then when it opens. And so the phrase “The Frozen River” just naturally came out. That's what I titled the document. And much to my surprise, I got to keep it. I was so happy.
And I do think it becomes thematic for the story. That river almost becomes a character itself over the course of the story. It is so volatile. The book opens—this is not a spoiler—and the first line is, "The body floats downstream." And before you've got about two paragraphs, the river has finished freezing and it locks this man in the ice. And then the book doesn't end for another six months until the river finally opens in the spring. And I don't know, it became a setting, it became a character, it became a title. It just worked.
NR: Yeah, it helped it become full circle.
AL: Yeah. Yeah.
NR: So, are you a fan of Audible?
AL: I am a fan of Audible. I have a subscription myself.
NR: Oh, what is your favorite listen?
AL: Ooh, that is a good question. Depends on time of year. During the summer, I listen to a ton of nonfiction. When I walk around my neighborhood, I'll go, I don't know, five miles. And I try to learn, I try to learn something new. In the winter, I'm more fiction-oriented because it's inside. And listen, I might have written a novel set in a very long, hard, cold winter, but I don't like to be outside. I am not a winter outdoor girl. I'm not your snowshoer or your skier or your hiker in the winter. Give me a fireplace and a cup of coffee and a good book.
So, I can open my little app here and tell you what is at the top of my list. I've got The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton. I've got Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. Ooh, 11/22/63 by Stephen King. I read the book in print. Oh God, it is so good. It is so good. I'm about to start listening to the audio version, which I've not heard yet. And 30 hours and 27 minutes. I cannot wait. Loved that book. I don't know what it is about Stephen King. He gets me, and something about the way that he tells a story locks me in. And I have been a fan of his since I was 12 years old. I read The Stand when I was 12. Possibly ill-advised, I don't know.
NR: He brings a lot of life to his characters. I think that's always been my favorite. I feel like I know the characters. So, even if I hate them, I'm just like, “Okay, I get it. I get it” [laughs].
AL: Yes. Yes.
NR: I’ve listened to It about five times at this point. It's so good. If you haven't listened to Steven Weber's performance, I can’t recommend it enough.
AL: Oh, I have not. I've been saving it. Okay.
NR: It's so great. With that in mind, what audiobooks would you recommend to fans of yours who are also fans of Audible?
AL: Yes. Okay. So, so many. Obviously, Outlander. Everyone loves Outlander, but the audio version is spectacular. If you have not listened to A Man Called Ove or The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, or probably one of my all-time favorites is Before the Fall by Noah Hawley. I lost five pounds listening to that book because I didn't want to stop walking. I would go for a walk and I would just keep going because I had to know what happens next. So that is my pro tip. If you want to drop pounds, get a good audiobook and just go walking.
NR: Walk and listen [laughs]. Okay. And you mentioned it briefly earlier, but what are you working on next?
AL: I am currently working on a novel tentatively titled “The Pirate Queen.” We will see if I get to keep the title or not, but it is the story—again, real person—of a woman named Grace O'Malley. She was a female chieftain in the 1500s in Ireland who also happened to be a pirate. She was a privateer. And this woman is astonishing. What she accomplished in her life, it will just melt your brain. But what is more fascinating to me is she kind of went head-to-head with Queen Elizabeth I and prevailed. So, you have, in my particular novel, two redheaded queens going to war. Not technically war, but definitely having some words with each other.
NR: Okay, I cannot wait to meet your new character and also learn more about her history. So thank you, Ariel, for taking the time. Listeners, you can get The Frozen River on Audible now.
AL: Thank you so much.
