March
Geraldine Brooks
 Mr. March, an abolitionist and chaplain, is driven by his conscience to leave his home and family in Concord, Massachusetts, in order to participate in the war. During this time, March writes letters to his family, but withholds the true extent of the brutality and injustices he witnesses on and off the battlefields. He suffers from a prolonged illness stemming from poor conditions on a cotton farm in Virginia. While in hospital he has an unexpected meeting with Grace, an intelligent and literate black nurse whom he first met as a young man staying in a large house where she was a slave. The recovering March, despite his guilt and grief over his survival when others have perished, returns home to his wife and Little Women, but has been scarred by the events he has gone through. The novel accurately reflects Bronson Alcott's principles, notably his belief that boys and girls of all races had a right to education, and his wish to follow a vegetarian diet. It presents the young Mrs March as a fiery character with strong verbal and physical expressions of anger.