When the Civil War breaks out, March knows that he cannot sit idly at home while younger men give up their lives for the cause March has helped champion: setting slaves free. He financially supports famed abolitionist John Brown and loses his entire fortune to the cause. Throughout his adult life, March is a strong supporter of the abolitionist movement, and he opens up his home to the Underground Railroad helping hide runaway slaves. As an adult, however, he meets and marries the fiery and intelligent Marmee Day and soon fathers four precocious daughters. The image of leaving Grace, the women he loved, tied up and bloody in Clement's backyard fills March with guilt for the rest of his life.

When Clement finds out, he banishes March from his property and has Grace publicly whipped. At Grace's request, March begins teaching Clement's slave children how to read. Clement, and falls in love with Clement's best slave, Grace. During one such business outing, March befriends a wealthy landowner, Mr. As a teenager, he first began making his fortune selling from door to door. As March progresses through the various Civil War battles, he often contemplates his past and how he got to where he is now. This boy, Silas Stone, will be the first of many ghosts to haunt March throughout the novel. The boy panics and in a horrendous act to save his own life, March pushes the boy away from him, to certain death in the raging river. In the opening scene, March is trying to save the life of a young injured soldier who has fallen into some water and cannot swim.

March is the story of Captain March, the father of the infamous March daughters from Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women, as he battles through the Civil War doing all he can to hold tightly to his morals while war ravages the country.Īt the opening of the novel, the reader learns that March is serving as a Union chaplain during the Civil War.

March novel by geraldine brooks