March

I just finished my second Pulitzer Prize winning book. (And here, for some reason, I feel compelled to note that it isn't really just the second ever book I've read that has won a Pulitzer Prize - I read To Kill a Mockingbird a few years ago - it's merely the second since I decided to read 10 of them for my 101 list.)

March
by Geraldine Brooks
2006
Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction in 2006

March tells the story of the only really unknown member of the March family from Little Women - the father, who during most of the original book is away at war. Not much of his tale is told in the original book, and this is something Geraldine Brooks sets out to change in March.

During this book, Mr. March becomes so much more than an absent father. He is fleshed out into a human being, desperate to help the slaves become free, while away from his family. He has triumphs and he has failures. The reader becomes engrossed in his story, as it entwines with the lives of so many others - former slaves, mostly, plus a man trying to make his fortune in cotton on a leased farm, and a woman he first met when he was 18. A woman who was born of a white estate owner and one of his slaves. This woman is educated - a rarity during a time when it was illegal to teach blacks so much as the alphabet. And what Mr. March feels for her isn't purely friendship.

Geraldine Brooks spins her tale alongside the story told in Little Women, masterfully weaving in the life of Mr. March to make the original novel more complete. I very much enjoyed this book, from beginning to end, and can easily see why it won the Pulitzer. I highly recommend it, and give it 5 out of 5 stars.