March by Geraldine Brooks (#20, Contemporary Literature)

I think the first book I ever read about war was in either late elementary school or early middle school--My Brother Sam is Dead. If I remember correctly it was set during the Revolutionary War and the family was split on each side of the war. I am always divided after I read books about war, on the one hand it is imperative to understand that war is not all about patriotism, and real people, young people, die and one side's cause is not always just and right. But on the flip side I always feel slightly sick to my stomach at the horrid acts people can commit against each other. What do they call that? The group mentality or something? Killing is one thing, but it is the killing of the young and innocent that gets to me. And of course March had a lovely chapter where it made me think war is just never worth such horrible occurrences.

I love what Geraldine Brooks did by taking a timeless classic, Little Women, and expanding it to tell the story of the missing father off at war. She did an amazing job weaving in a past about the March family that we didn't learn from Little Women, and adding a perspective we never heard during Alcott's classic.

I certainly was not around during the Civil War, and I am extremely grateful for that, but I think she was able to tell a story, that although appears to have a happy ending based on Little Women, was true and real and utterly sad, yet hopeful, because I think what we went to war for has been amended . . . maybe???