The March

A Novel

By: E.L. Doctorow

Narrated by: Joe Morton

Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

In 1864, after Union general William Tecumseh Sherman burned Atlanta, he marched his sixty thousand troops east through Georgia to the sea, and then up into the Carolinas. The army fought off Confederate forces and lived off the land, pillaging the Southern plantations, taking cattle and crops for their own, demolishing cities, and accumulating a borne-along population of freed blacks and white refugees until all that remained was the dangerous transient life of the uprooted, the dispossessed, and the triumphant. Only a master novelist could so powerfully and compassionately render the lives of those who marched.

The author of Ragtime, City of God, and The Book of Daniel has given us a magisterial work with an enormous cast of unforgettable characters–white and black, men, women, and children, unionists and rebels, generals and privates, freed slaves and slave owners. At the center is General Sherman himself; a beautiful freed slave girl named Pearl; a Union regimental surgeon, Colonel Sartorius; Emily Thompson, the dispossessed daughter of a Southern judge; and Arly and Will, two misfit soldiers.

Almost hypnotic in its narrative drive, The March stunningly renders the countless lives swept up in the violence of a country at war with itself. The great march in E. L. Doctorow’s hands becomes something more–a floating world, a nomadic consciousness, and an unforgettable reading experience with awesome relevance to our own times.

Enjoy The March? Listen to an interview with E.L. Doctorow on The Bob Edwards Show.

©2005 E.L. Doctorow (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

PEN/Faulkner Award Winner, Fiction, 2005

National Book Award Finalist, Fiction, 2005

2005 Publishers Weekly Listen Up Award, Fiction

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, Fiction, 2005

"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....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 at His Best

I haven't enjoyed a Doctorow novel this much since I first read Ragtime. The structure is similar: the story is told from the points of view of a diverse group of characters who have one thing in common, their participation--willing or unwilling--in events surrounding Sherman's march. The characterizations were fascinating. Someone mentioned his atittude towards Sherman was hostile, but I didn't read it that way. In fact, he tempered it with Sherman's sadness about his son's death and his subsequent sympathy for other children and for parents who have also lost children. And he seems to have a moment of insight when he meets Johnston near the end of the novel. I loved Pearl and Stephen Walsh, Calvin, Sartoris, Arly--all of whose lives had been changed forever by the experience of war--some for the better, others much worse. A solid and engaging work.

Gallops along at a breakneck, captivating pace

What did you love best about The March?

I began reading this as a recommended book from my college history course, only to be pulled in by one astonishing event after another, with heroes and antiheroes being introduced, toyed with, and sometimes wiped out altogether, leaving you with an unceasing suspense. The performance is also spot on, enlivening the audiobook with each character's voice and personality. I highly recommend this.

Great Book and Great Reader

This is a most enjoyable book, one of the best I have heard. There are many different voices ranging from the accents of southern, both those born free and the enslaved. There is also the ride range of voices found among the northerners. The reader does an excellent job.

The character development is wonderful and even though you know how the American Civil War ends, The March keeps you interested in its characters. You want to know what happens to Pearl, the newly freed young slave girl, Miss Emily, the judge’s daughter who looses everything when Sherman comes to town, particular soldiers, troop followers and a host of others affected by General Sherman’s march. You spend some time with Sherman and his officers, and the privates on foot. You meet an army surgeon born in Germany and a British reporter.

You encounter the brutality of war and still find some humor. The unexpected happens.

It is a good solid listen and one I look forward to hearing again.

Doctorow and his style

I love a good historical novel, and Doctorow is my favorite in this genre. Ragtime and The March both illustrate periods in American history that are much easier to feel and understand through his eyes. The reader was superb.

The narrator makes the book

I'm sure I would have enjoyed reading the print edition, but oh my the verbal acting ability of Morton made the experience exceptional. The ultra liberal use of character vignettes was a novel way of describing the various viewpoints of the conflict, but sometimes seemed lacking in development. My greatest disappointment was the ending--seemed like the author ran out of vision for his conclusion.

Had me gasping out loud.

Where does The March rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

One of the better historical novels that greatly conveys the grinding horror of Sherman's march that helped end the Civil War. There were several parts of the story where I gasped out loud. E.L.Doctrow uses language so well to communicate mood and theme. A truly great author.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Pearl is my favorite character. She helps convey the feelings of a slave while telling the story of the promise of a country evolving into a new social fabric.

What does Joe Morton bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Joe Morton is a 10/10 narrator. I will actively seek out other books he's narrated for listening. There are many characters in this book. Male, female, southern, northern, poor, wealthy.... Mr. Morton makes this book come alive - it's like listening to a multi-actor radio play. It's hard to believe this was all done by one guy. Just Excellent.

If you could rename The March, what would you call it?

Tearing apart a country to help it heal.

Joe Morton Is Exceptional!

While Doctorow is a master story teller, Joe Morton is the voice that brings each character to life. I was transported back to that time and rode/walked with those on the March. What a marvelous combination of great artists. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of good narration. Joe Morton's narration is excellent.
Highly recommend.

Inside the Civil War

Joe Morton’s narration is perfect for the serious and grave subject of Doctorow’s insight into Sherman’s March through the South to end the CW. The distinct and well drawn characters are so varied in intentions and backgrounds that a listener can picture these people and these devastating times as though walking with each one as a ghostly presence.

Uncivil War

Authors and historians uniformly treat war as either an individual's experience or some combination of military strategies and conquests. Almost never does an author show that war is not either or, but both.

Doctorow walks the tightrope in this gripping story of battles, conquests, race, class and individuals....especially individuals, representing every stripe and type all swallowed by Sherman's multi-bodied beast and its inexorable march to the sea.

In covering Sherman's campaign, the author makes it emblematic of the whole Civil War. The casual cruelty is more than any planned offensive. The lives broken and reformed a kind of mirror of a ravaged and remade Union.

There's not a single slow passage in the whole narrative and the urge to listen to it from beginning to end in a single sitting nearly irresistable.

More than any tale in memory, this is the most compelling reconstruction of what Civil War really meant.

This is a must have!

Not his best

A difficult subject to tackle because of the geographic spread of the action and the constraints of audio in following the action. Built into this genre is the uncertainty over who is an historic personage and who is a purely fictional character. I like Doctorow and thought City of God, Billy Bathgate wonderful novels. The writing in The March was not as rich as in City of God, but it was more than adequate to render the characters and the action. A problem was the absence of historic context - just what was happening elsewhere in the war, what was Grant doing, how important was Sherman's victories, etc.
One final caveat: Joe Morton's narration was not good enough. When de does the characters he's fine; but when he reads the narrator's voice it was dull and not properly inflected in too many places.