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March, by Geraldine Brooks

Anyone who has read Louisa Mae Alcott’s Little Women will likely remember the vague, background figure of the father of the four little women. For most of that book, he was far from home fighting the Civil War. In this Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Geraldine Books brings him to life, calling him only “March,” the family’s last name.

She paints March as a strong believer in the Union cause, but he is too idealistic and totally unprepared for the horrors of the war he is about to become involved in. The story follows March as he leaves behind his family and heads off to join the Union troops as a Chaplin.

But before leaving, and without consulting his wife, Marmee, he gives nearly all of the family’s fortune away to support the losing cause of John Brown, leaving his family to live on the very edge of poverty, barely surviving and only with the reluctant help of the family’s Aunt March.

Behind the lines of the battlefield, March comes face to face with violence, suffering, and the unexpected cruelty and racism of both Northerners and Southerners. His faith in himself and in his religious and political convictions are mightily tested. But his letters to his family are intentionally evasive and cheerful, never revealing the challenges and discouragement he faces daily. March becomes attached to a field hospital where he is faced with violence and horrible suffering which he is powerless to prevent.

He re-unites with Grace, a beautiful, well-educated Black nurse who he met years ago while working as a peddler, selling his wares to various Connecticut plantations. When his sexual indiscretion with Grace becomes known, March is sent to a plantation where recently freed slaves are able to earn money. But while he struggles with his duties as a Chaplin, he becomes seriously ill from the horrors he has experienced, his guilt and total disillusionment. Marmee is sent for and eventually is able to bring him home from the Washington hospital, a sick, broken man, and an invalid. His belief in himself is shattered. He is a changed man.

Then we learn the behind-the-scenes story of Marmee, the strong, outspoken and loving mother who kept her family together during their wartime struggles. She is both enraged and deeply hurt when she learns of March’s indiscretion. His actions have driven a wedge between Marmee and March. Marmee is again left to struggle with keeping her family together and nursing her invalid husband.

— by Gail Stilwill.

Chameleon Days: An American Childhood in Ethiopia, by Tim Bascom

Tim Bascom’s memoir of his childhood in Ethiopia is fascinating and beautifully written. It begins when three-year-old Tim and his two brothers were uprooted from their Kansas home and taken to Ethiopia by their missionary parents. Because Tim’s father is a doctor, the family first lived near an established missionary hospital. There is much to see and explore in this new and strange world and Tim’s visual memories are clear and colorful.

But when Jonathon, the oldest of the brothers, is sent to a faraway boarding school, both Jonathon and Tim are saddened and frightened. Jonathon is just six and is not at all happy to go. Tim reluctantly follows him when he is seven. They see their family during summers and on very rare visits. It is a difficult challenge for the young boys to be so far from their parents and younger brother in a strange country and for such a long time. But the family’s strong and loving ties helped them through it. The boys came to understand their parents’ strong commitment to the people they came to help and work among.

Ti’s childhood memories are amazingly clear. He finds a chameleon in a poinsettia tree and is fascinated by the little reptile and its abilities to change its color to blend in with its environment. He watches the chameleon’s two large eyes focus simultaneously on two completely different directions— a perfect symbol for the complex demands of missionary children: One “eye” watching desperately for a way to fit into the strange culture and know and understand the Ethiopians while realizing they will never truly belong; the other “eye” never losing sight of the American life they left behind.

Tim’s recollections of his childhood and his surroundings in Ethiopia are narrated with delightful color and wonder. Tim helps us see his pet chameleon crawling cautiously along his finger, eyes swiveling in different directions; Tim’s hiding place and observatory high in an avocado tree; the view of his world from behind the large leaves of a hibiscus tree; the frightening cries of hyenas just outside his bedroom window; and the banquet he and his family attended for Emperor Haile Selassie. As time passes the country becomes full of political unrest and rising turbulence, putting the lives of the missionaries at risk and finally leading to Selassie’s overthrow and the rise to power of brutal Marxist-Leninist regime.

It’s time for the family to return to Kansas. They leave with disappointment and reluctance, but return periodically for brief stays.

Books, Brews and Banter was privileged to have Tim Bascom and his wife Cathleen, the former dean of the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul, come to discuss his book and answer our questions. It was both fun and enlightening to hear about his childhood in Ethiopia from the author himself.

—by Gail Stilwill

Note: Many of us are looking forward to reading Tim’s second book, Running to the Fire.

Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan

Winner of the Bellwether Prize, awarded to a first literary novel that promotes social justice.

Two men return to the Jim Crow world of the Mississippi Delta from World War II; one is black, one is white. Both have lived a life far freer than the one they now face. Ronsel Jackson is the son of sharecroppers, and Jamie McAllan is the brother of the owner of Mudbound, the cotton farm that ties the two men and their families together.

It’s a miserable place, the owner’s house little more than a shack, the people mired both in mud and a system of rules that keeps everybody—blacks, whites, men, women— in their narrowly defined space. Ronstel’s father works a grueling schedule to maintain his status as a tenant farmer, which means he gets half of the crops he and his family harvests. When a storm kills his mule, he can no longer keep up and faces returning to sharecropper status, meaning he gets only 25 percent. So a mule is the difference between making a living wage and being forever indentured.

Ronstel’s mother Florence is a midwife who saves the lives of the farm owner\’s daughters and helps the wife, Laura McAllan, turn her hovel into something of a home. Yet, her thanks is to be treated as less than, because she is black.

The nonchalant racism of the farm’s owners is chilling. Laura notes that, while she appreciates Florence’s help, she is careful not to let the help cross the invisible line between black and white. She uses Florence’s first name, but Florence must call her “Miz McAllan.” And Florence and her daughter Lilly can’t even use the family’s outside toilet—they have to use the woods behind it. (Hard to see that as anything but an improvement, but rules are rules.)

Laura’s husband Henry is so in love with his land that he ignores the real dangers in his family, primarily those caused by his father, Pappy, who is evil incarnate and the catalyst for the disastrous events that end the novel.

Author Hillary Jordan writes each chapter in the voice of one of the main characters, giving insight into their hopes, fears, and justifications. She does not let Pappy speak, perhaps because he does not survive—which we learn in the first chapter, so no spoiler there. It would have been a challenge to hear such a nasty character explain himself, though. Such is the nature of his personality, however, that we all enjoyed the book a bit more knowing he would not survive.

—Pat Prijatel