The March
E. L. Doctorow, . . Random, $25.95 (363pp) ISBN 978-0-375-50671-0
Sherman's march through Georgia and the Carolinas produced hundreds of thousands of deaths and untold collateral damage. In this powerful novel, Doctorow gets deep inside the pillage, cruelty and destruction—as well as the care and burgeoning love that sprung up in their wake. William Tecumseh Sherman ("Uncle Billy" to his troops) is depicted as a man of complex moods and varying abilities, whose need for glory sometimes obscures his military acumen. Most of the many characters are equally well-drawn and psychologically deep, but the two most engaging are Pearl, a plantation owner's despised daughter who is passing as a drummer boy, and Arly, a cocksure Reb soldier whose belief that God dictates the events in his life is combined with the cunning of a wily opportunist. Their lives provide irony, humor and strange coincidences. Though his lyrical prose sometimes shades into sentimentality when it strays from what people are feeling or saying, Doctorow's gift for getting into the heads of a remarkable variety of characters, famous or ordinary, make this a kind of grim Civil War
Reviewed on: 07/18/2005
Genre: Fiction
Analog Audio Cassette - 978-0-7393-2134-8
Compact Disc - 10 pages - 978-0-7393-2135-5
Hardcover - 509 pages - 978-0-375-72848-8
Other - 219 pages - 978-1-58836-509-5
Paperback - 384 pages - 978-0-8129-7615-1
Paperback - 978-0-8129-6596-4
Paperback - 367 pages - 978-0-316-73198-0