Book Club - The Frozen River

 Today was our book club. I was the moderator. The book that had been selected was The Frozen River, by Ariel Lawhon. 

I am in awe of how the author constructed a complex historical fiction novel with many webs around life in Maine in the 18th century, midwifery, women's roles, a murder! The novel uses the diary of Martha Ballard, a midwife who chronicled her daily doings from 1784-1812 as the basis for much of her story. 

What intrigued me the most was that Martha's diary survived. It was transcribed by Robert & Cynthia McCausland, beginning in 1982. The process took over 10 years, and is comprised of 1400 pages.

Images of each page of the diary, and the transcription may be explored at https://dohistory.org.  

Ariel Lawhon includes relevant excerpts from the diary, but has conventionalized spelling and capitalization to make the entries easier to read.

I found a fascinating interview with Ariel Lawhon:

Another book about Martha Ballard was written by Laurel Thatcher. She wrote A Midwife’s Tale, The Life of Martha Ballard Based on her Diary 1785-1812. This is not a work of fiction, but Laurel shares pertinent parts of the diary and then discusses different aspects of life in Maine including health issues, social networks, economic roles and women's work. I found it rather challenging to read, but it considered to be a masterpiece. 

PBS aired a
film in their American Experience series about A Midwife's Tale. I found it to be excellent, and a good tie in to 

with The Frozen River.  

This is all probably more information than you want to know...but since I found these resources for the book club, I figured I might as well share them again! 

After the book club I worked on making a bag for our Dialysis patient friend. The quilt I made will fit in it, and he can carry a book, his phone, a pen, etc. I will pick up the straps tomorrow. There is a shop nearby that specializes in bag making. They have great nylon straps that are more durable than anything I can make out of fabric. 

We had rain! Four days in a row! This morning it poured-almost 2"! Even in our sandy area we had some standing water on the roads- for a short period of time. We had more rain late this afternoon. Maybe we are finally in the rainy season...aka the monsoon season! 

Is hamburger $8-$9.99 a pound in your area? No wonder hamburgers at some restaurants are $22!!! For dinner we had a meatloaf made with 50/50 beef and pork. It's the way my mom used to make meatloaf...and it was great.