March by Geraldine Brooks

One of the characters missing in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is the father, Mr. March.  Brooks creates a version of his life as a chaplain in the Civil War.  Although he often writes letters home full of longing for his wife and daughters, he finds himself increasingly drawn into the lives of the people he encounters particularly a young slave named Grace.  The comparison between the life he imagines of the family he left behind in the North and the realities of the war ravaged South make for an interesting perspective on the daily human struggle of the Civil War.  Borrowing a literary character to narrate this historical fiction is an interesting twist and, although it didn't quite inspire me to reread Little Women, I certainly thought about it.