Frozen...in a Historical Drama

Being that this is the first week of October and the official start of the fall season, don't you just feel like wrapping yourself up with a cozy Snuggie, a mug of cocoa, and a can't-put-down-until-3AM YA book? I suppose in my part of the world, I can just turn down the AC thermostat to below 70 and sit right in front of the air vent. We are still in the 90's down here, folks.

But, actual fall weather or not, Frozen by Mary Casanova is a great book to wrap around your hands during the midnight reading zone. Let me throw some words out there...1920's, Rainy Lake,a mysterious death, a snowbank, a historical drama, a lost voice, buried memories, corruption, secrets, a lost identity, a love story. If this is not enough to make you want to get your hands on Frozen like tonight, then I don't know what you want to read. Please don't tell me you want some dark, poorly written book, that follows all the conventions of poorly written books such as undeveloped characters, superficial writing, and overdone plot elements. Please tell me you want smart historical YA by a notable writer!


Summary (from the author's website):

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 intriguing 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?