Marmee

Told from the perspective of Margaret "Marmee" March, this novel follows the mother of the four March sisters through the year covered by Little Women — and the decade before it. With her husband away serving as a Union Army chaplain and money desperately short, Marmee holds her household together while carrying a private secret: an earlier financial mistake of her own is largely responsible for the family's hardship.

The story stays close to Alcott's original chronology, following Marmee as she manages her daughters' quarrels and growth, helps a destitute immigrant family in Concord, and volunteers at the city's relief rooms for the poor. It reframes familiar scenes from Little Women through the eyes of the one adult trying to hold everything together, giving weight to the sacrifices and doubts the original novel only gestures at.