March by Geraldine Brooks

Publisher: Viking Press

First Publication: 2005

Book Review: March by Geraldine Brooks

Raise your hand if you’ve ever found yourself utterly swept up in the comforting world of Little Women, only to have a nagging question persist at the back of your mind: “Yeah, but what was going on with the dad while all this was happening?”

Don’t worry, I’m giving myself a sheepish wave too. Because as much as I adored the cozy, sentimental adventures of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy growing up, part of me always yearned to understand the notable absence at the heart of their humble New England home life.

Where was their idealistic father, Mr. March, while his “little women” navigated the trials of poverty, romance, artistic ambition, and all those other timeless rites of passage? Fighting for the Union in the Civil War, as we eventually learn—but what did that entail beyond those brief asides?

Well, thanks to Geraldine Brooks’ ingenious novel March, we finally get to experience a richly detailed glimpse into the unsung chapters of Mr. March’s wartime odyssey. And I can’t help but feel grateful for this deeply humanizing portraits of a character who could have easily remained a two-dimensional paragon straight out of the 19th century morality tales.

Because in Brooks’ skilled hands, the absent paternal figure “Mr. March” from Little Women is suddenly a nuanced, flawed, multi-layered individual navigating the moral quagmires and harsh realities of the brutal combat he witnesses as a Union chaplain. Over the course of his long trek away from the cozy March homestead, we see a kaleidoscope of existential reflections, heartrending losses, and quietly heroic acts of resistance and empathy that forever alter his perspectives.

Right from those opening pages following Mr. March as he lies wounded and half-delirious after a brutal confrontation, you can feel the weight of this man’s burdens, the miles he’s traveled from that nostalgic domestic bliss we know so well. Brooks writes with such gritty authenticity about the day-to-day realities of being an idealistic New Englander thrust into the chaotic machinery of war—the homesickness, the loneliness, the challenge of maintaining one’s moral compass amid the violence.

Part of what makes Mr. March’s voice so magnetic to follow is the perceptive wisdom and self-awareness he brings to interrogating the chasm between his longtime Abolitionist principles and the ugliness he encounters. You can sense his inner conflict over facing the realities of slavery and racial injustice, self-reproaching over how blinded he’s been to the evils in his own backyard.

There’s a wonderful moment early on where he wrestles with defensiveness over feeling inadequate next to a worldly, educated Black servant he encounters. Despite his bookish Concord upbringing and deep-seeded belief in equality, here’s a free man embodying qualities March has barely contemplated—confidence, pragmatism, biting humor, and social graces that put the chaplain’s naivete in harsh relief.

It’s an incisive bit of character work that immediately roots the narrative in an aura of unflinching self-reflection—the kind of philosophically probing literature Thoreau might heartily endorse. There’s a sense of March’s sheltered belief systems being steadily broken down by the cold slap of frontline reality.

And that erosion of his cozier ideological stances forms the central emotional arc you can’t tear your eyes away from. Much like Reverend Dimmesdale in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, March is a principled man slowly having his hypocrisies and moral shortcomings laid bare under the weight of extreme circumstances.

Every wrenching brush with the atrocities of slavery, the constant threat of mutilation or massacre hanging over his battalion, even minor transgressions like his inappropriate attraction to a former bondservant in his company—Brooks depicts it all with such unvarnished candor, fleshing out this iconic literary figure with vulnerability and grit.

But lest you think that makes March an overly grim, punishing character study, Geraldine Brooks strikes the perfect balance by interspersing his existential crises with welcome flashes of levity and warmth. Whether it’s the wry observational humor he directs at the more roguish troops in his outfit or the surprisingly funny, homespun exchanges with his loving wife Marmee, the story never loses its rich sense of humanity amid the bleaker battlefield stretches.

You’re never bogged down in minutiae of warfare either. Brooks’ knack for detail work means the horrors of this era are vividly evoked without feeling like you’re slogging through turgid historical textbooks. Those vivid momentary glimpses, like Mr. March’s haunting confrontation with a lynched freedman hanging from a tree, pack such a visceral punch. It all feels so immediate and lived-in, not dutifully recorded like a Civil War reenactor’s diary.

And if that stark portrayal of violence wasn’t enough to shake you out of any lingering nostalgic reveries you still harbored, Brooks’ unflinching look at the fringes of 19th century medical practices should thoroughly do the trick. Trust me, unless you have a strong stomach, those harrowing scenes set in battlefield triage tents are liable to keep you up at night.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the cozy domesticity of the March household over having to witness the blood-soaked jolts of a tortured limb amputation any day of the week! Let’s just say Brooks went to exquisitely unsparing lengths to capture the disturbing realities of Civil War medical access in a way little Amy would never dare put to paper.

Of course, that harsh juxtaposition of the bloodied and the idyllic is part of what gives March its richly immersive texture. We’re not just treated to the horrors Mr. March has to confront, but also those wistful interludes where he reflects back on his wife and daughters, cherishing memories of quiet evenings spent discussing Plutarch’s morality plays or indulging in games of literary dress-up.

In these quietly powerful moments, you can feel the anchor of the March home binding their absent paterfamilias, imbuing him with purpose amidst the chaos of his vagrant soldier-priest existence. There’s a lovely sequence where he tries invoking his daughter Meg’s knitting lessons as a zen-like ritual to ground him after coming face-to-face with a grisly slaughter site. Those kinds of uniquely personal touches add a tremendous amount of heart and specificity to the proceedings.

And with March ultimately being a literary love letter of sorts to the March family’s enduring legacy, it’s only fitting that the book builds to an absolutely transcendent ending beat. Without spoiling the quietly heartrending final pages, I’ll just say there was a sustained, beautiful payoff awaiting me after that grueling emotional gauntlet. Brooks sticks the landing with a flourish that retroactively recasts certain early incidents and passages in an entirely new light.

Just as March himself has his quaint, long-cherished notions of virtue steadily dismantled throughout his brutal self-reckoning, the coda packs a subtle, life-affirming punch that had me feeling that unique literary catharsis only truly great novels can impart. I emerged with fresh new perspectives on the power of human perseverance, the search for moral clarity amid ethical murk, and the quiet courage of unsung individuals whose sacrifices are too easily overlooked by history books obsessed with battles and ideologies.

In short, March takes a hallowed, almost mythic literary figure from our childhood and imbues him with a startling, gritty new dimension—the dimension of flawed, searingly honest humanity. Geraldine Brooks has pulled off a minor miracle in retroactively humanizing this saintly absentee “Mr. March” without deconstructing what made him resonate so richly in the first place.

While some authors might buckle under the weight of having to flesh out such an iconic paternal role, Brooks has risen to the considerable challenge by crafting an utterly immersive, psychologically authentic character study cloaked in the guise of historical fiction. This is a bracingly raw odyssey, but one bookended by immensely tender domestic tapestries that pay respectful homage to the March family’s enduring literary stature.

So if you’ll excuse me, I have a sudden and overwhelming urge to revisit Louisa May Alcott’s cozy original after being so thoroughly shaken by this transformative experience. I may never look at Mr. March the same way again, but it’s a small price to pay for gaining such profound new perspectives on his unsung wartime sacrifices and existential awakenings.

Those were the untold chapters missing from Little Women’s comforting parlor scenes, but thanks to Geraldine Brooks’ masterwork in “March”, they’ve finally been given a stirring, soul-baring voice I’ll carry with me for years to come. Not too shabby for an unassuming 19th century chaplain, eh?