Absentee Fathers

Remember how Little Women is all about the chicks in the March family? While they’re chilling out in Concord, Massachusetts, Mr. March is off serving as a chaplain in the Union Army during the Civil War. Louisa May Alcott gives her readers very little information about his experiences during the war, and it’s this void that Geraldine Brooks fills in with her book, March.

Much as Alcott modeled Little Women’s sisters after her own family (she, of course, represented aspiring writer Jo), Brooks looks to Alcott’s father for inspiration here. His politics and ideologies—many quite radical for the day—are present in the book, and Brooks paints a picture of a deeply flawed but earnest and good-hearted man trying to do right by his family and in the world.

Brooks adds depth to other LW characters left unexplored, too: in addition to Mr. March’s war experiences, we get a lot of back story about Marmee, and she come across as more three-dimensional and less saintly than in Alcott’s portrait. We also learn more about March and Marmee’s courtship as well as the family’s fall from society into poverty.

And while all the nods to Little Women are a lovely addition to the original novel, It’s March’s experiences with slaves and war contraband (escaped slaves and former slaves who were taken by the Union Army) that give the story its heart. Knowing Little Women surely added something to the experience of reading March, but this is a novel that stands on its own quite well.