March, The (Doctorow)

Book Reviews
It is Mr. Doctorow's achievement in these pages that in recounting Sherman's march, he manages to weld the personal and the mythic into a thrilling and poignant story. He not only conveys the consequences of that campaign for soldiers and civilians in harrowingly intimate detail, but also creates an Iliad-like portrait of war as a primeval human affliction—"not war as adventure, nor war for a solemn cause," but "war at its purest, a mindless mass rage severed from any cause, ideal, or moral principle," a "characterless entanglement of brainless forces" as God's answer "to the human presumption."
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times

The March conjures up the War of Secession—also known as the War Between the States and the War of Northern Aggression—as vividly as any contemporary account I've read, and more plausibly than most. Devotees of our nation's darkest hour, as well as that subset of Confederacy buffs willing to entertain the possibility that all may not have been roses in the antebellum South, will find a great deal to admire in its pages.
John Wray - Washington Post

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 Canterbury Tales. On reaching the novel's last pages, the reader feels wonder that this nation was ever able to heal after so brutal, and personal, a conflict.
Publishers Weekly

Doctorow portrays William Tecumseh Sherman's army, which devastated Georgia and the Carolinas during the Civil War, as a living organism, several miles long, moving forward, devouring everything in its path. He paradoxically achieves a panoramic view by focusing on the stories of a wide variety of individuals, from freed slaves and soldiers of both sides to physicians tending the wounded, displaced widows and orphans, and even Sherman himself. As in Ragtime, Doctorow cuts back and forth among these fascinating stories, achieving a rhythm that echoes the chaos of the historic events. The March educates as it entertains and finds laughter amidst tragedy. Such a wide spectrum of characters gives reader Joe Morton a nearly unique opportunity, and he excels, voicing characters of varying races, ages, genders, and regions with aplomb. Nominated for a National Book Award, this is clearly one of the best novels of 2005; every library will want it. —John Hiett, Iowa City P.L.
Library Journal

(Adult/High School.) A Civil War tale with much to engage teens. The title refers to a climactic event, General William Tecumseh Shermans March to the Sea. Using a nonlinear (but not especially challenging) structure that recalls his groundbreaking Ragtime, Doctorow narrates events through multiple Union and Confederate perspectives. A rich variety of individuals, both fictional and historical, populates a moving world of more than 60,000 troops accompanied by thousands of former slaves and assorted civilian refugees who follow Sherman on his ruthless progress through Georgia and the Carolinas. While many characters are essentially entertaining sketches, there are a few memorable standouts, particularly 15-year-old Pearl, a so-called white Negro fathered by her owner. Taking advantage of the chaos after war disrupts her tightly controlled existence, she flees her looted plantation home, disguises herself as a drummer boy, and joins the march, determined to reach freedom and create a life worth living. On the way, she experiences moments of violence, love, irony, and even humor in the midst of horror. Short cinematic episodes illuminate and interpret history with meticulous attention to period settings, from terrifying battlefields to desperate field hospitals to once-grand mansions, all described in lyrical language crafted by a skilled writer. —Starr E. Smith, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
School Library Journal

William Tecumseh Sherman's legendary "march" (1864-65) through Georgia and the Carolinas-toward Appomattox, and victory-is the subject of Doctorow's panoramic tenth novel. As he did in his classic Ragtime (1991), Doctorow juxtaposes grand historical events with the lives of people caught up in them-here, nearly two dozen Union and Confederate soldiers and officers and support personnel; plantation owners and their families; and freed slaves unsure where their futures lie. The story begins in Georgia, where John Jameson's homestead "Fieldstone" becomes a casualty of Sherman's "scorched earth" tactics (earlier applied during the destruction of Atlanta). The narrative expands as Sherman moves north, adding characters and subtly entwining their destinies with that of the nation. Emily Thompson, daughter of a Georgia Chief Justice, finds her calling as a battlefield nurse working alongside Union Army surgeon Wrede Sartorius (who'll later be reassigned to Washington, where an incident at Ford's Theater demands his services). "Rebel" soldiers Will Kirkland and Arly Wilcox move duplicitously from one army to another, and the Falstaffian pragmatist Arly later courts survival by usurping the identity of a battlefield photographer. John Jameson's "white Negro" bastard daughter Pearl becomes her former mistress's keeper-and the last best hope for melancholy "replacement" northern soldier Stephen Walsh. Sherman's war-loving subordinate Justin "Kil" Kilpatrick blithely rapes and loots, finding a boy's excitement in bloody exigencies. There's even a brief appearance by indignantly independent black "Coalhouse" Walker (a graceful nod to the aforementioned Ragtime). Doctorow patiently weaves these and several other stories together, while presenting military strategies (e.g., the "vise" formed by Sherman's gradual meeting with Grant's Army) with exemplary clarity. Behind it all stalks the brilliant, conflicted, "volatile" Sherman, to whom Doctorow gives this stunning climactic statement: "our civil war...is but a war after a war, a war before a war." Doctorow's previous novels have earned multiple major literary awards. The March should do so as well.
Kirkus Reviews