March

This novel gives a life of his own to the father who is away at war in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. An abolitionist clergyman from Concord and a friend of Emerson and Thoreau, he joins the Union army as a chaplain and is later sent to teach freed slaves working a cotton plantation. His letters home are cheerful, but he keeps from his family what he sees: the racism and cruelty of soldiers on both sides, suffering he cannot stop, and a reunion with Grace, an educated enslaved woman he met years before as a young peddler in the South. Memories of his courtship of the fiery Marmee and of how the family lost its money run alongside, until he lies feverish in a Washington hospital and his wife takes up the story.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical, War, Love (assigned by AI)

Set in

United States, 1860s

First published

2005 by Viking

Author's age

50 when first published

ISBN

9780670033355 (Viking, United States)

9780732278410 (Fourth Estate, Australia)

9780007165865 (Fourth Estate, United Kingdom)

9780143036661 (Penguin Books, United States)

9780007165872 (Harper Perennial, United Kingdom)

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Wikidata