for the "absent father" of the March girls. Some aspects of this chronicle were informed by the life and philosophical writings of the Alcott family patriarch, Amos Bronson Alcott, whom she profiled under the title "Orpheus at the Plough", in the 10 January 2005 issue of The New Yorker, a month before March was published. The parallel novel received a mixed reaction from critics, but was nonetheless selected in December 2005 by the Washington Post as one of the five best fiction works published that year, and in April 2006, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She was eligible for the prize by virtue of her American citizenship, and was the first Australian to win the prize. In her next novel, People of the Book (2008), Brooks explored a fictionalized history of the Sarajevo Haggadah. This novel was inspired by her reporting (for The New Yorker) of human interest stories emerging in the aftermath of the 1991–95 breakup of Yugoslavia. The novel won both the Australian Book of the Year Award and the Australian Literary Fiction Award in 2008. Her 2011 novel Caleb's Crossing is inspired by the life of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, a Wampanoag convert to Christianity who was the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College, in the seventeenth century. Brooks, at the invitation of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, delivered the 2011 series of the prestigious Boyer Lectures. These have been published as "The Idea of Home", and reveal her passionate humanist values. The Secret Chord (2015) is a historical novel based on the life of the biblical King David in the Second Iron Age. In 2016, Brooks visited Israel, as part of a project by the "Breaking the Silence" organization, to write an article for a book on the Israeli occupation, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War. The book was edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, and was published under the title "Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation", in June 2017. Horse (2022) is a historical novel based upon the racing horse Lexington. It quickly became a New York Times Best Seller. Recognition 2006: Pulitzer Prize for March 2008: Australian Publishers Association's Literary Fiction Book of the Year for People of the Book 2009: Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award 2010: Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Achievement Award 2016: Officer of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day