The March

E. L. Doctorow digs deeply into American history once again in this epic tale of Sherman's march to the sea--a 60-mile trail of death and destruction--toward the end of the Civil War. Mingling real historical figures with imagined ordinary people, Doctorow offers a panoramic view of the South and of the war in a story that encompasses a dedicated battlefield nurse, a black ragtime pianist, a young and beautiful slave named Pearl, a brutal good ol' boy addicted to violence--and, of course, the hot-blooded Sherman and his scorched-earth military tactics that, for all their brutality, may have hastened the end of the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves.