Geraldine Brooks won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for March, a novel about the absent father in Little Women.
Published in 2005, March imagines the experiences of John March, the father who is away from home for much of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Brooks places him in the American Civil War, where he serves as a chaplain and encounters slavery, violence, moral compromise, and the limits of his abolitionist ideals.
The novel is a work of historical fiction and a companion to Alcott’s classic, rather than a continuation written by Alcott. Brooks drew on Alcott family history, including the author’s father, Bronson Alcott, when shaping the character.
March won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2006. Its central viewpoint helps explain why the father is largely absent from the original novel, while also creating a separate story about war, marriage, race, and conscience.