“I never promised I would write the truth,” John March thinks as he pens an upbeat letter to his wife. This thought sets the tone for this novel of married love, illegal passion and the horrors of the Civil War by Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks.

Based on the character who is mainly absent from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, March recounts the graphic story of his volunteering during the first year of the Civil War. An idealistic abolitionist minister, too old at 39 to be drafted, Mr. March volunteers to be a chaplain in a Connecticut regiment. Without even discussing his decision, March leaves his wife and four daughters to fend for themselves while living on seriously reduced means.

Moving back in time, Brooks recounts March’s first trip to Virginia as a 19-yearold peddler. There he was exposed to what he at first perceives as the charm and grace of plantation life, has a passionate sexual encounter with a beautiful house slave and then sees the true brutality of slavery.

Brooks has March continue to write beautiful, trivial letters to his wife, never sharing with her the truth of the brutality all around him, nor his feeling of responsibility for some of the lives he sees lost. Like most men of that era, he was “protecting” his wife. But he never prepared her for the reality she would someday have to face.

Wounded in body and mind and near death, March is reunited with the wife he left behind. They now have the difficult task of rebuilding the marriage they once had. Not an easy read with its graphic descriptions of wounds, amputations and death and the physical abuse of slaves, March is nevertheless worth the effort.

The LML Book Club holds its meetings on the second Tuesday of each month at the library. This book is available at the library, along with many other current volumes.