Et cetera : What we're reading: March

After reading this book, I felt as though I had travelled back in time, to an America that I didn't live through, but which now I understand in a new way. To begin with, Ms. Brooks does an excellent job of embodying not only characters from the past, but also of evoking the time period itself.

Of course, as a child of the 50s and 60s, I read "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott, and wondered how the family managed without the father of the family. I pictured him as a strict but loving, scholarly man who went off unwillingly to fight in a war solely because it was his duty. I have come to imagine him in a new light.

I believe that a reader's perception of this novel will depend a great deal upon the age, political views, and whether or not he or she has read Alcott's books, which laid the groundwork for this book. I had a difficult time reconciling the taciturn educator of the original book with the wily and dishonest traveling salesman of this rendition of the story. Taken separately, both characters are believable, but the two men are so different in my mind that I cannot picture the Mr. March of this book as the one I've "known" for years as the father of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. I do recommend the book, however, as it gives a very vivid and compelling account of the Civil War. I give it a 4/5.

~Connie