Geraldine Brooks takes the reader into her idea of Mr. March's life as he leaves his family to experience the war as a chaplain to Union soldiers. When the reader is first introduced to March, he has just escaped death as his unit crosses the Potomac, and he relives the death of a fellow soldier and his own inability to help him. Brooks depicts a man torn between two worlds: one full of violent and hate and the other a beautiful work of fiction he writes to Marmie in his letters home. "I never promised I would write the truth," he admits.
Through the course of the novel, we see March evolve from an idealistic dreamer to a broken man, forced to live with the consequences of his actions, the lives that his weaknesses have cost. He attempts to improve the lives of the "freed" slaves working the plantation for "fair" wages, to save them from a worse fate. But in the end, it is the slaves that save him.
Upon his return home, he is a weak and broken man, unable to live with the guilt. "So this was how it was to be, now: I would do my best to live in the quick world, but the ghosts of the dead would be ever at hand." Returning home to a world that has continued without him, a life seperate from his own. How does he return to that? To find comfort in the arms of his wife and daughters when he has witnessed and caused such devastation and and pain, where the lines of right and wrong are blurred and the rules are unclear.
In the end, however, there is a glimmer of hope as "for an instant, everything was bathed in radiance."
For me, March was similar to Lamb in His Bosom as it made me think of the Civil War in a different way, in a way not taught in the classroom. March comments, "One day I hope to go back. To my wife, to my girls, but also to the man of moral certainty that I was... that innocent man, who knew with such clear confidence exactly what it was that he was meant to do." While this is a nice thought, can we ever go back to the innocence we once had. Like Adam and Eve, once our eyes are opened and we have tasted the sometimes bitter fruit of truth, we can't go back. And like Eve, he becomes aware of the cost associated with ideals and the number of people that are affected by his moral certainty.
I enjoyed the journey with Mr. March. Although at times it was tough to trudge through, I remained a faithful companion to the end of his journey and am better for it.
As Kansas so aptly wrote:
Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more.
Rest well, Mr. March. Rest well.
Up next, All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren, which won the Pulitzer in 1947.
Until then... Happy reading.
