The March

The March is set in late 1864 and early 1865, near the end of the American Civil War. Its title refers to General William Tecumseh Sherman’s march with 60,000 troops from Atlanta to Savannah. Ordered to live off the land, the soldiers pillage homes and burn crops, and attract a growing population of freed slaves and refugees with nowhere else to go. Sherman is central, but the novel has no single main character: it follows a large cast, white and black, rich and poor, Union and Confederate, whose lives are caught up in the war.