Geraldine Brooks does a masterful job of capturing the Civil War through the eyes of a New England intellectual, writing her story in the blanks left open in Little Women. I’ve enjoyed her other books and was not disappointed here. It’s terriffically written; the language is unassuming and engaging, the plot a sure and steady progression to an inevitable emotional crisis. The fact that readers of Little Women will already know the ending doesn’t detract from the intrigue at all, since the story Brooks creates for Mr. March is a world almost entirely separated from that of his daughters and his wife.

In fact it’s that separation which forms a major theme of March. From the outset we know that Mr. March is quietly withdrawing from his tacit promise to give his wife a full account of his experience at war, and this separation only grows deeper as the story continues. Eventually it encompasses an x`emotional infidelity that is in some ways more devestating than a phsycial one. And of course in Part 2 (a structural element that cleverly alludes to Alcott’s book), we learn just how severely Mr. and Mrs. March have misunderstood each other. While it’s not altogether surprising, the revelation that Mrs. March did not particularly care of her husband’s foray into the war is a telling example of just how blind the latter can be; it’s also a good reminder that even the most big-hearted liberals can be foolishly insensitive to others. At the outset of the story we’re inclined to believe that the Marches enjoy a tenderly loving wedding; but by the time the book is over, we’re almost ready to believe the opposite.

March’s story bounces back and forth in time, jumping between his experience in war, his younger days as a peddler, and the early days of his marriage and calamitous dealings with John Brown. It’s pretty fascinating just to get a look at what the antebellum days were like, and Brooks’s imaginative narrative gives us a chance to see daily life both in plantation Virginia and tony Massachusetts. The two settings are rather different, but they are pulled together with similar images of landscapes blanketed in white: the snow in Massachusetts and the cotton fields in Virginia. The image cluster, and its allusion to the white supremacy that ties the country together, is perhaps a bit on the obvious side, but I appreciated it nonetheless. More than that, the contemporary characters fairly jump off the page. I found the scenes with a young Henry Thoreau especially wonderful, followed closely by the scenes with John Brown. This book pairs well with the Good Lord Bird, which follows Brown in a great deal more detail.

The scenes on the liberated plantation were extremely fascinating, although for a different reason. They offered a glimpse, perhaps the first I’ve ever read, of what life may have been like during Reconstruction. To be sure, it must have been difficult, morally complicated, and a jagged transition away from the cruelties of slavery. On the other hand, it must also have been filled with its own sort of triumphs. I found myself rather nostalgic for this historic period about which very little is written, and of which I know even less: because what strikes me is that it must have been, in some ways, a terrifically exciting time for the cause of liberation and economic justice, and was cut far too short.

It may be worth considering the difference between Brown and March, since the fate of the two is so closely intertwined. On the one hand you have Brown: a firebrand whose greatest accomplishment was a violent insurrection that attempted and failed to incite a massive slave rebellion, and yet succeeded, after a fashion, in bringing national tensions between abolitionists and slave-holders to such a sharp point that he could reasonably be said to have precipitated the Civil War. On the other hand you have March: a calm New Englander whose passion is reserved for the pulpit, and who can’t seem to do a single thing right, whether it’s investing in real estate or providing spiritual guidance for an army troop. That is a bit unfair perhaps, but his story does seem shot through with incompetence and failure.

And yet, it’s the small achievements that redeem him. The blue scarf which embodies both Jo’s stitching and March’s fledgling efforts to educate former slaves is a wonderfully drawn symbol of those achievments, and they are the reason that the reader, like his wife, ultimately agree to forgive him his many failings.

I’ll close with the thought that the title is perfectly chosen. Most obviously it alludes to the main character. And of course, the war he has joined, and the dreary effort to move forward day after day, despite the emotional and physical drain. But it’s also about the month, the beginning of spring, and the motif of rebirth, in all of its manifestations: the moment in the narrative when it became clear that the liberated plantation would succeed; the rebirth in the March’s marriage; and the renewal of liberty in the US, a moment of profound hope in our history.