March: a novel

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As the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats during the dark first year of the Civil War, one man leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs.From Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has taken the character of the absent father, Mr. March, who has gone off to war leaving his wife and daughters to make do in mean times. In Brooks's telling, Mr. March emerges as an idealistic chaplain in the little known backwaters of a war that will test his faith in himself and in the Union cause as he learns that his side, too, is capable of acts of barbarism and racism. As he recovers from a near mortal illness, he must reassemble his shattered mind and body and find a way to reconnect with a wife and daughters who have no idea of the ordeals he has been through.

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ISBN
9780670033355
9780143036661
9780593910528
9781101079256

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Similar Titles From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for titles you might like if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
These books have the appeal factors bittersweet, cinematic, and richly detailed, and they have the genres "historical fiction" and "war stories"; and the subject "slavery."
Blending fact with fiction, these compelling novels reimagine stories of well-known figures from Little Women. March is based on the novel's father character, while The Other Alcott is inspired by Louisa May Alcott's sister May, the basis for Amy March. -- Halle Carlson
The classic Little Women's legion of fans will delight in these retellings that flesh out secondary characters: a richly-detailed historical novel about Mr. March, mostly offstage in the original (March), and a witty feminist take on The Other March Sisters. -- Michael Shumate
These books have the genre "epistolary novels"; and the subjects "military chaplains," "abolitionists," and "slavery."
These novels focus on characters greatly affected by the Civil War, weaving several points of view together. Though the narratives are rather different and March has a darker tone, the books have much in common for readers to appreciate. -- Katherine Johnson
In these vividly descriptive, character-focused historical novels, historical figures drive storylines about unusual people in unusual roles during the American Civil War. The Spymistress features a Southern Quaker woman who gathers intelligence for the Union. -- Katherine Johnson
These books have the genre "epistolary novels"; and the subjects "slavery," "freed people," and "united states civil war, 1861-1865."
Twain & Stanley enter paradise - Hijuelos, Oscar
Significant 19th-century figures provide the inspiration for these complex, richly imagined psychological novels. Twain & Stanley follows author Mark Twain and explorer Henry Stanley, while March imagines the Civil War experiences of Bronson Alcott and his wife Abigail. -- Katherine Johnson
The glory cloak - O'Brien, Patricia
These novels vividly portray the American Civil War from the viewpoint of members of Louisa May Alcott's family. Each employs fictional characters to expand on documented history: The Glory Cloak portrays an imaginary cousin to Louisa Alcott. -- Katherine Johnson
These books have the appeal factors sweeping, and they have the subjects "teachers," "slavery," and "freed people."
Believably flawed side characters from the literary canon take center stage in these historical novels. March follows the wartime experiences of Robert March, the father in Little Women, while Marilla serves as a prequel to Anne of Green Gables. -- Ashley Lyons
Although set centuries apart, these character-driven historical novels both revisit the stories of noteworthy literary figures through the eyes of "secondary" characters: the son of William Shakespeare in Hamnet and the father of the titular March sisters in Little Women. -- Ashley Lyons

Similar Authors From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for other authors you might want to read if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
Nancy Horan and Geraldine Brooks write literary fiction in which history provides a richly detailed backdrop for their narratives. They weave fact and fiction to provide an intimate portrait of their characters and the historical events surrounding them, using triumph and tragedy to deftly describe the bittersweet nature of life. -- Keeley Murray
Tracy Chevalier and Geraldine Brooks write intriguing historical novels, sometimes blended with contemporary events, often focused on women. Historical details abound, but these critical events are made personal through skilled character portrayal. Rich background details enhance these compelling, unsentimental, lyrically written novels of other times and places. -- Joyce Saricks
Hernan Diaz and Geraldine Brooks write thought-provoking literary historical fiction. Their richly detailed novels have a strong sense of place and historical era and feature flawed, complex characters. Diaz has focused on American settings, while Brooks has used those as well as other places around the world. -- Michael Shumate
Geraldine Brooks and Anita Diamant both write character-driven historical fiction featuring courageous female characters. Both authors have written Biblically inspired fiction and stories about Jews living under religious persecution. Historical details are at the center of Brooks' literary novels while Diamant's inspiring stories tend to focus more on characters' relationships. -- Alicia Cavitt
These authors' works have the appeal factors nonlinear, and they have the subjects "confederate soldiers," "extramarital affairs," and "freedom seekers."
These authors' works have the appeal factors bittersweet, and they have the subjects "married men," "husband and wife," and "reconstruction (united states history)."
These authors' works have the subjects "social classes," "slavery," and "civil war."
These authors' works have the subjects "married men," "eighteen-year-old women," and "seventeen-year-old girls."
These authors' works have the appeal factors nonlinear, and they have the subjects "courage," "eighteen-year-old women," and "confederate soldiers."
These authors' works have the genre "family sagas"; and the subjects "racism," "united states civil war, 1861-1865," and "freedom seekers."
These authors' works have the appeal factors bittersweet, and they have the subject "slavery."

Published Reviews

Booklist Review

Brooks' first novel ( Year of Wonders0 , 2001) was a straightforward historical novel of the plague. For her second novel, she has come close to creating a new genre; she imagines the life of Captain March, the father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women0 . This technique has been done before, most famously in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea0 . Brooks, however, has combined this idea with two other genres, historical fiction and fictionalized biography. The results, however, are mixed. March appears, much like Bronson himself, as a man whose convictions tread a thin line between admirable and aggravating. He is pure to the point of being ineffectual, and noble to the point of stupidity. The nineteenth-century writing style is accurate and entertaining, but it may be too ornate for some readers. The best moments in the narrative are the peeks inside the mind of the long-suffering Marmee, and thus we learn where Jo gets her famous spunk. --Marta Segal Copyright 2005 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Publisher's Weekly Review

Brooks's luminous second novel, after 2001's acclaimed Year of Wonders, imagines the Civil War experiences of Mr. March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. An idealistic Concord cleric, March becomes a Union chaplain and later finds himself assigned to be a teacher on a cotton plantation that employs freed slaves, or "contraband." His narrative begins with cheerful letters home, but March gradually reveals to the reader what he does not to his family: the cruelty and racism of Northern and Southern soldiers, the violence and suffering he is powerless to prevent and his reunion with Grace, a beautiful, educated slave whom he met years earlier as a Connecticut peddler to the plantations. In between, we learn of March's earlier life: his whirlwind courtship of quick-tempered Marmee, his friendship with Emerson and Thoreau and the surprising cause of his family's genteel poverty. When a Confederate attack on the contraband farm lands March in a Washington hospital, sick with fever and guilt, the first-person narrative switches to Marmee, who describes a different version of the years past and an agonized reaction to the truth she uncovers about her husband's life. Brooks, who based the character of March on Alcott's transcendentalist father, Bronson, relies heavily on primary sources for both the Concord and wartime scenes; her characters speak with a convincing 19th-century formality, yet the narrative is always accessible. Through the shattered dreamer March, the passion and rage of Marmee and a host of achingly human minor characters, Brooks's affecting, beautifully written novel drives home the intimate horrors and ironies of the Civil War and the difficulty of living honestly with the knowledge of human suffering. Agent, Kris Dahl. 10-city author tour. (Mar. 7) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
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School Library Journal Review

Adult/High School-In Brooks's well-researched interpretation of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Mr. March also remains a shadowy figure for the girls who wait patiently for his letters. They keep a stiff upper lip, answering his stiff, evasive, flowery letters with cheering accounts of the plays they perform and the charity they provide, hiding their own civilian privations. Readers, however, are treated to the real March, based loosely upon the character of Alcott's own father. March is a clergyman influenced by Thoreau, Emerson, and especially John Brown (to whom he loses a fortune). His high-minded ideals are continually thwarted not only by the culture of the times, but by his own ineptitude as well. A staunch abolitionist, he is amazingly naive about human nature. He joins the Union army and soon becomes attached to a hospital unit. His radical politics are an embarrassment to the less ideological men, and he is appalled by their lack of abolitionist sentiments and their cruelty. When it appears that he has committed a sexual indiscretion with a nurse, a former slave and an old acquaintance, March is sent to a plantation where the recently freed slaves earn wages but continue to experience cruelty and indignities. Here his faith in himself and in his religious and political convictions are tested. Sick and discouraged, he returns to his little women, who have grown strong in his absence. March, on the other hand, has experienced the horrors of war, serious illness, guilt, regret, and utter disillusionment.-Jackie Gropman, Chantilly Regional Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Library Journal Review

In Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, readers see a perfect, self-sacrificing, loving, close-knit family. Brooks here concentrates on the absent father. Referring to him as simply March, Brooks creates a picture of his struggle with his not-so-perfect life during his tour of duty as a chaplain on the Civil War battlefields of Virginia. What emerges is the complex conflict of a man of principle who must adjust to fit the reality he encounters. March wrestles with hatred, evil, violence, ignorance, rage, lust, illness, and competing loyalties, from both outside himself and within. The author's extensive research provides the details of time and place that make this tale so compelling. Richard Easton's delivery is flawless-the characters are complex, their encounters, realistic. Recommended.-Joanna M. Burkhardt, Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Univ. of Rhode Island, Providence (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Kirkus Book Review

Brooks combines her penchant for historical fiction (Year of Wonders, 2001, etc.) with the literary-reinvention genre as she imagines the Civil War from the viewpoint of Little Women's Mr. March (a stand-in for Bronson Alcott). In 1861, John March, a Union chaplain, writes to his family from Virginia, where he finds himself at an estate he remembers from his much earlier life. He'd come there as a young peddler and become a guest of the master, Mr. Clement, whom he initially admired for his culture and love of books. Then Clement discovered that March, with help from the light-skinned, lovely, and surprisingly educated house slave Grace, was teaching a slave child to read. The seeds of abolitionism were planted as March watched his would-be mentor beat Grace with cold mercilessness. When March's unit makes camp in the now ruined estate, he finds Grace still there, nursing Clement, who is revealed to be, gasp, her father. Although drawn to Grace, March is true to his wife Marmee, and the story flashes back to their life together in Concord. Friends of Emerson and Thoreau, the pair became active in the Underground Railroad and raised their four daughters in wealth until March lost all his money in a scheme of John Brown's. Now in the war-torn South, March finds himself embroiled in another scheme doomed to financial failure when his superiors order him to minister to the "contraband": freed slaves working as employees for a northerner who has leased a liberated cotton plantation. The morally gray complications of this endeavor are the novel's greatest strength. After many setbacks, the crop comes in, but the new plantation-owner is killed by marauders and his "employees" taken back into slavery. March, deathly ill, ends up in a Washington, DC, hospital, where Marmee visits and meets Grace, now a nurse. Readers of Little Women know the ending. The battle scenes are riveting, the human drama flat. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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Booklist Reviews

Brooks' first novel (Year of Wonders, 2001) was a straightforward historical novel of the plague. For her second novel, she has come close to creating a new genre; she imagines the life of Captain March, the father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. This technique has been done before, most famously in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea. Brooks, however, has combined this idea with two other genres, historical fiction and fictionalized biography. The results, however, are mixed. March appears, much like Bronson himself, as a man whose convictions tread a thin line between admirable and aggravating. He is pure to the point of being ineffectual, and noble to the point of stupidity. The nineteenth-century writing style is accurate and entertaining, but it may be too ornate for some readers. The best moments in the narrative are the peeks inside the mind of the long-suffering Marmee, and thus we learn where Jo gets her famous spunk. ((Reviewed February 1, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.

Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.
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Library Journal Reviews

Brooks imagines what happened to March, father of Alcott's little women. With a ten-city author tour. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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Publishers Weekly Reviews

Brooks's luminous second novel, after 2001's acclaimed Year of Wonders, imagines the Civil War experiences of Mr. March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. An idealistic Concord cleric, March becomes a Union chaplain and later finds himself assigned to be a teacher on a cotton plantation that employs freed slaves, or "contraband." His narrative begins with cheerful letters home, but March gradually reveals to the reader what he does not to his family: the cruelty and racism of Northern and Southern soldiers, the violence and suffering he is powerless to prevent and his reunion with Grace, a beautiful, educated slave whom he met years earlier as a Connecticut peddler to the plantations. In between, we learn of March's earlier life: his whirlwind courtship of quick-tempered Marmee, his friendship with Emerson and Thoreau and the surprising cause of his family's genteel poverty. When a Confederate attack on the contraband farm lands March in a Washington hospital, sick with fever and guilt, the first-person narrative switches to Marmee, who describes a different version of the years past and an agonized reaction to the truth she uncovers about her husband's life. Brooks, who based the character of March on Alcott's transcendentalist father, Bronson, relies heavily on primary sources for both the Concord and wartime scenes; her characters speak with a convincing 19th-century formality, yet the narrative is always accessible. Through the shattered dreamer March, the passion and rage of Marmee and a host of achingly human minor characters, Brooks's affecting, beautifully written novel drives home the intimate horrors and ironies of the Civil War and the difficulty of living honestly with the knowledge of human suffering. Agent, Kris Dahl. 10-city author tour. (Mar. 7) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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School Library Journal Reviews

Adult/High School-In Brooks's well-researched interpretation of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Mr. March also remains a shadowy figure for the girls who wait patiently for his letters. They keep a stiff upper lip, answering his stiff, evasive, flowery letters with cheering accounts of the plays they perform and the charity they provide, hiding their own civilian privations. Readers, however, are treated to the real March, based loosely upon the character of Alcott's own father. March is a clergyman influenced by Thoreau, Emerson, and especially John Brown (to whom he loses a fortune). His high-minded ideals are continually thwarted not only by the culture of the times, but by his own ineptitude as well. A staunch abolitionist, he is amazingly naive about human nature. He joins the Union army and soon becomes attached to a hospital unit. His radical politics are an embarrassment to the less ideological men, and he is appalled by their lack of abolitionist sentiments and their cruelty. When it appears that he has committed a sexual indiscretion with a nurse, a former slave and an old acquaintance, March is sent to a plantation where the recently freed slaves earn wages but continue to experience cruelty and indignities. Here his faith in himself and in his religious and political convictions are tested. Sick and discouraged, he returns to his little women, who have grown strong in his absence. March, on the other hand, has experienced the horrors of war, serious illness, guilt, regret, and utter disillusionment.-Jackie Gropman, Chantilly Regional Library, VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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