March

Finished February 17
March by Geraldine Brooks

I've had this one on my shelf for a while, and finally got to it. This book was inspired by Little Women and imagines the story of their father, Mr. March. As the book begins, March is embedded with Union troops as a chaplain, involved in a battle that isn't going well. Following the battle, as he makes his way to a plantation house taken over by troops, he realizes that he has been there before as a young man, when he worked as a peddler. It was here that he first came face to face with the realities of slavery.
The story mostly stays in the time of the Civil War, but it also wanders back to his days as a peddler, his first meeting with Marmee, and the early days of their marriage, outlining how he gradually became the man he is now, and how he came to be where he is.
I found it interesting to see both him and Marmee as more complex characters than they appear in the stories of their daughters.
Brooks based March partly on Louisa May Alcott's father Bronson, but also on other historical figures and using other historical information, particularly around the Civil War, which Bronson did not serve in.
My copy also has an interview with Brooks, and a reading guide for the book.