One day, Sadie Rose stumbles on a half dozen faded, scandalous photographs—pictures, she realizes, of her mother. They release a flood of puzzling memories, and these wisps of the past send her at last into the heart of her own life’s great mystery: who was her mother, and how did she die? Why did her mother work in a brothel—did she have a choice? What really happened that night when a five-year-old girl was found shivering in a snowbank, her voice and identity abruptly shattered?
Sadie Rose’s search for her personal truth is laid against a swirling historical drama—a time of prohibition and women winning the right to vote, political corruption, and a fevered fight over the area’s wilderness between a charismatic, unyielding, powerful industrialist and a quiet man battling to save the wide, wild forests and waters of northernmost Minnesota. Frozen is a suspenseful, moving testimonial to the haves and the have-nots, to the power of family and memory, and to the extraordinary strength of a young woman who has lost her voice in nearly every way—but is utterly determined to find it again.
Mary Casanova is the author of thirty books, ranging from the picture book One-Dog Canoe to the historical fiction novel The Klipfish Code. Her awards include an American Library Association “Notable,” Aesop Accolades by the American Folklore Society, a Parent’s Choice Gold Award, a Booklist Editors’ Choice, and two Minnesota Book Awards. Much of her inspiration comes from where she lives on the Minnesota–Canadian border, and she loves to explore the northwoods with her husband, Charlie, and their two horses and three dogs.