Patrice McDonough's 3 favorite reads in 2024

“The Frozen River” by Ariel Lawson begins with a birth and a death. It’s 1789 in rural Maine at the start of the coldest winter in memory. Midwife Martha Ballard assists at the disappointing birth of a family’s third daughter: the blacksmith had hoped for a helpful son. Then Martha is called again into the frigid night to examine the body of a murdered man hacked from the frozen Kennebec River. The victim is one of two men accused of raping the village clergyman’s wife; the other is the town’s most powerful figure.
What I love about the book is its rich portrait of a professional woman living in a vividly imagined time and place. Martha Ballard is humane, skilled, humorous, courageous, and commonsensical. Censorious, arbitrary, and dismissive men populate her world. Still, Lawhon gives Martha some male allies among the villagers and a loving husband who sees their marriage as a partnership.
In the Author’s Note, Lawhon directs you to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Martha Ballard, “A Midwife’s Tale” (1990), and explains how she follows and veers from history’s track.

I caught up with a short novel on my long “to-be-read” list: “The Wife of Martin Guerre” by Janet Lewis. Since its publication in 1941, the book has garnered extravagant praise as one of the greatest short novels of the twentieth century. Lewis’s French source is a sixteenth-century court case about the mysterious disappearance and return of Martin Guerre and the contested question of his identity.
I love that the book belongs to Bertrande de Rols Guerre, not her husband, Martin. She is the enigma that Janet Lewis unpacks. We meet eleven-year-old Bertrande on her wedding day, although the marriage won’t be consummated until she matures. She is an observing child—not wise beyond her years but watching everything around her—and you sense she will grow into a thoughtful woman. Bertrande’s marriage to Martin seals their families’ alliance, resolving old disputes that had divided the village. Martin’s disappearance disrupts the order of things, confounding everyone, especially Bertrande. After eight years, Martin returns to his wife. Or does he?
Although the novel is only 95 pages with minimal dialog, the writing is rich, expansive, and evocative. Bertrande’s story lingered.

Emma Woodhouse—now the happily married Mrs. George Knightley—is the sleuth in Vanessa Kelly’s delightful Jane Austen-inspired mystery, “Murder in Highbury.” When a corpse turns up in the village church, clever Emma is on the case. Readers of Austen’s “Emma” will agree: Vanessa Kelly chose the perfect murder victim in Mrs. Elton. But who cracked the vicar’s wife over the head with a candlestick? Sleepy Highbury provides a surfeit of suspects.
Kelly endows her Emma Knightley with just the right blend of charm and spice and supports her with a terrific cast of quirky characters drawn from Austen’s novel. Kelly creates a wiser Emma who is matured by marriage and united in an equal partnership with Mr. Knightley. Their lively banter is pitch-perfect.
What I loved most about the book was that Vanessa Kelly paid equal attention to recreating Austen’s Highbury and crafting the story’s mystery. It’s bliss to revisit Emma’s world, and the twisty plot will keep readers guessing until the end.