I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was well-written and engaging.
For those of you who haven't read it yet, the idea springs from the book "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott. The father, who is away to war for much of "Little Women" is the main character here. The story is told mainly from the perspective of John March who is with the Union army in the Civil War as a chaplain. It shows the letters he writes home to his wife and four daughters (the characters in "Little Women") and then also tells of the realities of the war -- the two are far from similar.
Mr. March's story is about a man with a dream to educate and help others. He starts off in the thick of the fighting, but soon gets reassigned because he doesn't get along with the soldiers and the other chaplains. It was hard for me to decide what Mr. March actually believed in the way of religion and spiritual matters. All I could see clearly was that he disagreed with most of the other characters, but it didn't seem very important to the storyline to me.
For the main part of the book, he is trying to free and teach former slaves to read and write while the Civil War is still under way. Mr. March does well, though he is quite critical of himself, and has enthusiastic students, and he is good to them as a teacher and also in getting them the things they need, like clothing. He stays on the plantation even when he knows he is in danger and continues to teach the former slaves. The plantation gets raided and several of the slaves are captured and Mr. March follows them with the help of one of the slaves. They finally free some of the captured slaves, but then the raiders and the slaves get in a fight where most of the slaves are killed. One slave woman helps Mr. March, who is in a fevered delirium, escape and get medical help from the Union army.
My favorite part of the book is when the former slave woman gets to the Union army they won't let her bring Mr. March across. She can't speak, so she writes a note about who he is. It was very powerful to see that she had learned from him and it saved his life.
He makes it back north to a hospital and is met there by his wife. He is very sick and we get the story from Mrs. March's point of view for a few chapters. This was very interesting to me because we get to see that she and her husband are not on the same page at all. He tells us several things about her reactions and what they meant to him and when she tells it from her perspective, it is completely different than he thought it was.
He doesn't want to go home; he wants to continue his work in the South. He feels like he failed the first time around and thinks he owes it to those who died to continue. His daughter Beth gets sick and his wife leaves. He wants to stay and help a black woman nurse, Grace Clement. She was a side story throughout -- he met her before he was married and she could read. He helped her by teaching another slave, a child, to read and she gets severely beaten for it when they are caught. Then he sees her again during the war tending her master, who also happens to be her father. They have a little thing, I think they kissed. Then later she is one of his nurses in the hospital. Anyway, he wants to help her, but she tells him he needs to go home and he does.
Brooks tells a sad, but engaging story. It was interesting to see "Little Women" from such a different perspective. I would highly recommend this book. There are a few hard things like rape and war violence, but they are not graphically told. Mr. March is a likeable character and this view of the Civil War is different than others I have read.
I hope you enjoyed it as well.
Questions to think about:
Do you think Mr. March betrayed his family by writing letters that were not wholly truthful, or was he showing love by sheltering them from that?
How do you think Mr. and Mrs. March could have bettered their communication? Could the misunderstanding have been avoided?
What was your favorite part of the book?
