Frozen by Mary Casanova ARC Review

 Title: Frozen

Author: Mary Casanova

Published: September 1st, 2012

Book rating: 4 stars

Cover rating: 4 stars  

Sixteen-year-old Sadie Rose hasn’t said a word in eleven years—ever since the day she was found lying in a snowbank during a howling storm. Like her voice, her memories of her mother and what happened that night were frozen.

Set during the roaring 1920s in the beautiful, wild area on Rainy Lake where Minnesota meets Canada, Frozen tells the remarkable story of Sadie Rose, whose mother died under strange circumstances the same night that Sadie Rose was found, unable to speak, in a snowbank. Sadie Rose doesn’t know her last name and has only fleeting memories of her mother—and the conflicting knowledge that her mother had worked in a brothel. Taken in as a foster child by a corrupt senator, Sadie Rose spends every summer along the shores of Rainy Lake, where her silence is both a prison and a sanctuary.

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.

Starting this book I figured that it would be about a girl that discovered how her mother truly died and possibly how she came to terms with it but Frozen is so much more. It's about how Sadie Rose not only finds out about her mothers true death and how it happened but she also finds herself in this book and her voice, literally and mentally. For the past eleven years she let people boss her around and decide what she did and who she was for her. After finding photographs of her mother it's like old memories light a fire within her. I absolutely love watching Sadie Rose grow up and become a woman, a person who could survive on her own in only three weeks. In the beginning of the book she was very timid and afraid to speak what she thought, but after gaining her actual voice back she gained a powerful voice on the inside. This story was such a good one, being my first ARC I am very pleased at how it turned out! I think my favorite character was actually Trinity, she has so many problems of her own yet she was so willing to reach out and be there for Sadie Rose even though they were strangers. I love how at the ending the roles of their relationship sort of flip flopped and Sadie Rose was able to help Trinity with her problems. I really do wish we could have gotten to know Owen a bit better, but I am satisfied with the information that was provided about Sadie Rose and his relationship. (: 

I would definitely recommend this book and I am honestly not too big on books that are set in the past. It was a nice quick read. 

Favorite Quotes

"Other than an occasional cry or moan, my voice had died with Mama years ago. Silence. My sanctuary and prison." - Sadie Rose

"Well finally, a sign of life!" Trinity exclaimed, as if she were a midwife who had just wrestled an emerging baby from the womb and delivered it into the world of living. - Sadie Rose

"It had started, I realized now, with finding the photographs. With facing the past--a past I could not change. But I could change. I would not allow others to direct my life, to dam it up like a flowing river, directing it to fit their needs." - Sadie Rose

"Mama," I whispered. "You promised someday things would be better..." And look where I'd ended up. Without a home. Without a plan. Running. - Sadie Rose

"My past weaves itself through my being." - Sadie Rose

"Ahead, beyond the horizon, my future stretches out like a ribbon of silver. The train clacks and sways, jolting along its winding journey... north." - Sadie Rose

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