March by Geraldine Brooks tells the story of the  absent father in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.   Mr. March becomes  a Union chaplain who sees the cruelty and racism of Northern and Southern soldiers, violence that he can do nothing about, as well as an encounter with a beautiful slave he met when he was a peddlar in Connecticut.   This novel reveals  horrors and ironies of the Civil War.  Enjoy !