March

Geraldine Brooks takes a very minor character from Louisa May Alcott's LITTLE WOMEN--Mr. March, the girls' preacher father--and makes him the main character in this Civil War novel, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Serving as a chaplain with the Union army, March becomes a teacher on a plantation, where he meets up with Grace, a woman slave he knew years ago. Tormented by the scenes of cruelty and suffering he witnesses--and the casual racism of nearly everyone he encounters--March struggles to keep his ideals intact. Brooks based her vibrant and well-researched portrait of March partly on Bronson Alcott, the New England transcendentalist and father of Louisa May.