I approached this particular book with no small measure of trepidation, since it takes place in the world of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. This novel tells what befell the father of the March girls while he was off at war. It's so well done, so richly imagined, and well researched, that it feels to me like a welcome enlargement of my knowledge of that family I thought I knew so well already. I started reading it when I went to bed, and put it down, dazed, sometime after midnight. I recommend it, without reservations.