*****
It's winter 1789 and Martha Ballard is a midwife in Hallowell, Maine, a town on the Kennebec River.
Hallowell, Maine in the 18th century
As a midwife, Martha not only helps women give birth, she acts as a medic for the community, treating injuries and ailments with her poultices and potions. Martha also functions as a kind of coroner, examining bodies for cause of death.
When the corpse of a landowner named Joshua Burgess is pulled from the freezing Kennebec River, Martha determines he was beaten and hanged before being thrown in the water.
Burgess had enemies because he's been accused of rape; and he was aggressive with a young woman at a dance. In fact Martha's grown sons threw Burgess out of the dance, and the landowner's body was found in the Kennebec River the next morning.
Martha is convinced Burgess was murdered, but her opinion is set aside when haughty young Dr. Page, newly graduated from Harvard Medical School (which he mentions every minute), insists Burgess's death was an accident.
Martha is especially interested in Burgess because of the rape charge leveled against him. Martha's patient, a pretty young mother called Rebecca Foster, claims Joshua Burgess and Judge Joseph North came to her house when her husband was away, roughed her up, and raped her. Rebecca confided in Martha about the terrifying incident, and showed Martha her horrific bruises.
A court hearing was scheduled for both Burgess and Judge North, and now Judge North will have to face the rape charges alone.
Since Judge North IS the magistrate in Hallowell, the case has been moved to a different venue, where Martha will testify. Martha is one of the few women in Hallowell who can read and write, and the daily journal she keeps contains notes about Rebecca's contusions and abrasions.
As preparations for the trial are made, Martha goes about her daily life. Martha takes care of her husband Ephraim and their six surviving children (three of their children previously died); collects medicinal plants; makes potions; treats townsfolks' maladies; attends women while they give birth; and so on.
Every evening Martha writes in her journal. She pens notes about her life and family; mentions occurrences in Hallowell; and records information about her patients.
Through all this, Dr. Page is a huge thorn in Martha's side. Page is an arrogant chauvinist, and - though he's never delivered a baby - insists on using his own methods. As a result Page almost kills a woman during labor, and Martha has to save the woman's life. Later on, Page testifies at a judicial hearing, and makes assertions that affect Martha's family.
Martha takes it upon herself to look into the death of Joshua Burgess, trying to discover who killed him. Martha hopes to remove suspicion from her sons, who were seen fighting with Burgess the night before Burgess's body was found.
In addition to being a murder mystery and a courtroom drama, the novel has side stories about things going on in Hallowell. Judge North has a nefarious scheme to take over the Ballards' property, including their valuable sawmill. Martha and her husband, though in their mid-fifties, are still affectionate and intimate. Martha is trying to pair up her shy, mute son with a young single mother, and more.
If you're familiar with modern courtroom dramas from television, you won't recognize the legal system in early Maine. In the late 1700s, the judicial system in America was a nascent affair with hearings/trials taking place in taverns; women being allowed to testify ONLY if their father or husband was present; laymen often functioning as judges; all male juries (of course); etc.
Along with everything else, the book provides a fascinating peek at colonial life, which was especially harsh in the freezing Maine winters. For the most part, men worked in the mills or on farms, hunted, fished, trapped, joined the military, etc. And women cleaned, cooked, baked, made candles, spun wool, sewed clothes, had babies, and so on. Martha Ballard was an outlier in that she had a profession in addition to her domestic duties.
For me, who thought most early Americans were Puritan goody-two-shoes, it was a surprise to learn that many babies in Hallowell were conceived out of wedlock. (Some things never change, right?) In Hallowell, this might lead to a shotgun wedding, or it might result in a court hearing to identify the father and punish the mother. To give Martha Ballard credit, she didn't look down on these unfortunate moms.
This is an excellent book, highly recommended.
In case you're interested, historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book based on (the real) Martha Ballard's diaries, called A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
Also, there's a 1998 movie based on Ulrich's book, called The Midwife's Tale.
Rating: 4 stars
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