The March

A Novel

By: E.L. Doctorow

Narrated by: Joe Morton

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

Critic reviews

Praise for E. L. Doctorow

“E.L. Doctorow is a national treasure.”
–St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Beautifully written, meticulously plotted, scrupulously imagined.”
–The New York Times Book Review, about Sweet Land Stories

“In the assured hands of Doctorow, City of God blooms with a humor and a humanity that carries triumphant as intelligent a novel as one might hope to find these days.”
–Los Angeles Times, about City of God

“A ferocious feat of the imagination . . . Every scene is perfectly realized and feeds into the whole–the themes and symbols echoing and reverberating.”
–Newsweek, about The Book of Daniel

“One devours it in a single sitting.”
–The New York Times, about Ragtime


“Marvelous . . . You get lost in World’s Fair as if it were an exotic adventure. You devour it with the avidity usually provoked by a suspense thriller.”
–The New York Times, about World’s Fair

Captivating

I listened to the March on a 5 hour drive to Charleston And couldn't wait to get back into my car to continue with this moving, powerful and insightful novel. The narrator fit the book to a T. I likened the experience to watching a Ken Burns' documentary and was sorry to see it end.

A good listen

?The March? is a well-constructed listen with a good narrator. Like many of the audible listeners I keep a book on my iPod at all times and find this one of my favorite parts of the day. I listen to the New York Times on the way to work and a novel home. I am a Civil War buff and found some interesting insight here. The suspense, however, was not so great that I sat in the car in the garage. That is my criteria for a great novel. I give it a 4 of 5.

Just a wonderful book

And Joe Morton is my new favorite narrator. This book defines Sherman's march by the outlines created by the stories of the many, varied and interesting characters portrayed. It is beautifully done, with outstanding descriptions and characterizations. I hated for it to end!

Bad reader

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

What I loved about this was the detailed depiction of the horrors and wanton destruction of Sherman's march. (I am assuming that Mr. Doctorow did his research.) This is an event in history that was given very short shrift in my distant high school education. It's no wonder that The South still holds a lot of grudges against The North.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Joe Morton?

This is a very disappointing read by a good actor. Too bad. He doesn't seem to have rehearsed at all, so that by the time he reaches the end of a sentence, he sounds surprised. However, his voice is very nice. But he also seems to confuse a southern accent with stupidity, so that the intelligent characters and the slower ones all sound equally slow of mind.

A compliment to Foote' The Civil War Narrative

The narration made the characters come to life. Although a historical fiction novel, it captures the delicate relationship between the southerners who were faced with a superior Union Army who was fighting for a country.