March

I started this book tonight again.  I had read the first page or two a week or so ago....and thought that perhaps I wouldn't read it.  But I read more pages tonight while I ate my dinner and I am HOOKED!  Oh, my gosh.

Ok....back to the beginning.  I have wanted to attend the book group that meets at the Gallaher library with my buddy, Mitzi.  I never seem to be able to go when she is attending.  Or I haven't read the book.  Or I forget.  But this is the book for this month and Geraldine Brooks is one of my favorite authors.  I really want to go this month.  I already own the book.  It is just a matter of reading it in a timely manner.

So I pulled it out tonight.  I am only on page 40.  But I can almost not breathe at the end of the last chapter when they whip the black woman named Grace for having encouraged the cook's daughter, Prudence to learn to read.  Mr. March had instructed her at night with Grace's encouragement  And the man who has appeared to have been such a gentleman requires Mr. March to watch.  It is too terrible.  And then the women gather at the end of the beating that is too hard to bear to take care of the the whipped woman.  How can people have lived like that and not have POISONED that man.....have not have stuck a knife in his heart?

Here is the review on the Goodreads site:

Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize For Fiction. From the author of the acclaimed YEAR OF WONDERS, an historical novel and love story set during a time of catastrophe, on the front lines of the American Civil War. Acclaimed author Geraldine Brooks gives us the story of the absent father from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women - and conjures a world of brutality, stubborn courage and transcendent love. An idealistic abolitionist, March has gone as chaplain to serve the Union cause. But the war tests his faith not only in the Union - which is also capable of barbarism and racism - but in himself. As he recovers from a near-fatal illness, March must reassemble and reconnect with his family, who have no idea of what he has endured. A love story set in a time of catastrophe, March explores the passions between a man and a woman, the tenderness of parent and child, and the life-changing power of an ardently held belief.

Mr. March meets Grace again during the Civil War and the other information that she reveals to him also takes one breath.