Geraldine Brooks, has been a correspondent for the WSJ and a writer of fiction and non-fiction. Amazon.com lists 10 books by her. This novel won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize, but the strong comments (very positive or very negative) from my wife’s Book Club intrigued me.

From Little Women (Louisa May Alcott’s classic), Brooks makes the absent father, Mr. March, the main character. Before he married, as a Yankee peddler he spent much time in the antebellum south on a VA plantation. After marriage, he invested too much in the ill-fated schemes of John Brown and lost his fortune. In the Civil War’s first year, he left his family to go off to war as a chaplain. March saw the decimated VA plantation he had known in its prime. Deciding he had failed badly as a chaplain, he tries to educate former slaves on an experimental plantation worked by these freed slaves. Despite trying his hardest, he can neither grasp their worldview nor help them much. He becomes very ill, near death. The book’s last part is told by his wife, who tends him in a hospital until he is well enough to return home, broken in body, mind, and spirit. His experiences degraded both his marriage and his former ardent beliefs. In the past I’ve read many novels about our Civil War and this novel is far too depressing – it focuses only on the downward spiral of March, who could neither accept the reality of war nor his failures. I found little new or worthwhile in this book by Geraldine Brooks. I do not recommend it.