Did you read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott? I did, many years ago when I was a child and I didn't understand it. I never tried again although I would like to some time. This story is based on the father in Little Women. The "little women" were the four daughters of Marmee and Mr. March. Mr. March is away at war during the story of Little Women. So tell us about Mr. March please.
That is what this book is about, Mr. March as an 18 year old itinerant peddler where he meets a black house slave named Grace. He loves teaching and so starts teaching a young black slave how to read, at Grace's behest. Trouble follows and Mr. March leaves in some disgrace and Grace is punished.
Some years later, after he has amassed quite a bit of money, he meets Marmee and marries her. He is an abolitionist as is Marmee and they shelter runaway slaves as part of the underground railway. Then through a series of mistakes he loses his fortune and Marmee is left to try to make a good life for them all. She is productive and loving. Mr. March is a critical husband at times and I think he is getting bored with his good wife and his good little girls. He makes no effort to re-establish their financial security but instead, at age 40 or thereabouts, decides to join the war effort. No asking his wife, he just decides and off he goes, the idiot.
It is brutal and bloody and he feels guilty at each life he fails to save, the ones he possibly could have and those he couldn't. He is a chaplain and not a popular one. And then, who should he run into? Grace. There is re-kindling of the former attraction and Mr. March is writing all these cheery, hopeful and lie filled letters back home.
Someone sees him with Grace and he gets transferred to work on a plantation in the south as a teacher of black slaves who are now supposed to be working because they want to and to get paid for the work. Much goes wrong and he nearly dies. Who should end up nursing him? Grace. In the meantime Marmee and the girls are working as hard they can to supply things for the war; clothes and blankets and such. Mr. March continues to be a complete idiot and a coward in my opinion. Not easy from a hospital bed but he accomplishes it. He is lucky he only loses one of the 6 women who love him. I left this book with a very low opinion of Mr. March and I am sure if I ever read Little Women I will be sneering as I think about what Mr. March is doing during the time he is away from home during the war. Grace, Marmee and the girls are all good women, he didn't deserve them.
Whew, got a little upset didn't I?

I am putting this into Diane's Shrinking Book Box.

Selected by Bookworm-lady from the Shrinking INTL VBB.

Selected by Bookworm-lady because she liked my JE! It is on its to her in Spain.

And here it is! :)
Thanks for sending it to me all the way from Washington, now I see it won the Pulitzer Prize back in 2006, which makes me even more eager to read it.
And yes, your JE was decisive in my choice.
Thanks again!!

I have tagged brunton11 with it; I will read it first.

Currently reading it; so far a brutal account of Mr. March's experiences at war, while he writes home something completely different.
I can't wait to see if he is such an idiot and coward as Booksandmusic considered him... ;)

Well, yes, complete agreement with BooksandMusic; Mr March is not a likeable character, not by far... and this puts a different spin on the idyllic lives of the four March women of my childhood reads...

By the way, I always thought that Marmee was a way to say Mummy... now it appears that this is the way Mrs. March was called all her life! Amazing.

I like the way in which the point of view shifts from husband to wife, she is the narrator in the second part, starting when Mr March is badly wounded and at hospital. I quote:

"How different my life should have been, if our fortune had not been lost so completely! I had never blamed my husband for squandering all on Brown's ventures; I had no right to do so. The money he advanced was his entirely, the product of his own labors and sage investments, and the cause, surely, was dear to us both. Yet it bit at me cruelly that he had nor even consulted me in this, a matter that touched me so nearly and had such large consequences for us all. I had tried to bear the small insults and indignities of poverty, even to embrace, as he did, the virtues of a simple life. But where he might retire to his study and be wafted off on some contemplation of the Oversoul, it was I who felt harassed at every hour by our indebtedness and demeaned by begging credit here and there; I who had to go hungry so that he and the girsl might eat."

I think this is a good summary of their situation: he squandered their fortune, went to war when he could have stayed and provide for his family, and was indeed quite selfish throughout...

I really enjoyed reading this novel, very well written.

Now it will continue its travels; thanks for sharing it with me. :)

Sent today to brunton11; I tagged her with it.
Enjoy!! :)

Arrived safely today. Thank you for the tag.

I had this book on my wishlist as it as one of the earlier Richard and Judy recommended reads. I wouldn't normally have picked this book up to read so it's been a good source of different books to try.

From earlier entries I was expecting to have quite strong feelings about Mr March but actually found the setting of the American Civil War more interesting as I didn't know a huge amount about it beforehand.

Sending on to wormyone next who has this on their wishlist as well.

Thank you, brunton11, for your generosity! Looking forward to this...

I found this to be a moving account of an idealistic man losing his illusions.

Unlike earlier readers of this copy, I found March likeable; well-meaning and earnest, if misguided and a man of his time.

His failure to consult Marmee on his decision to enlist is based on his belief, albeit mistaken, that she supports it. Of course, it could be argued that he should have checked, but I found his assumptions and behaviour credible given the era in which the book is set.

I didn't think him the coward he judges himself to be. He stands by his principles and does his best. The only time it seems to me he could be accused of cowardice is when Ptolemy is killed. But really, which of us would have had the guts to reveal ourselves in this situation; and would it have made any difference anyway?

I've got just two quibbles. First, the neatness of the plot with, as others have commented, Grace reappearing not once but twice.

Second, the very concept: in writing her classic, Alcott deliberately made March absent; setting out to cancel that absence doesn't sit right with me.

But Brooks' Pulitzer winner is based on research into the life of Alcott's father (Little Women is semi-autobiographical) and well-known figures with which he associated (John Brown, Henry Thoreau, Waldo Emerson...), and perhaps the quality of this book justifies the project.

On the book sharing shelf on the first floor of the "other" building (at the end of the lane to the right as you face reception).