Short answers, pulled from the story.
The March is a 2005 historical fiction novel following General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea during the American Civil War. Set in late 1864 and early 1865, it traces Sherman's army of 60,000 troops cutting a 96-kilometer-wide path of destruction from Atlanta to Savannah, told through a diverse cast of characters including freed slaves, Confederate soldiers, a field surgeon, and Southern civilians.
The March won the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the 2006 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and the 2006 Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. It was also a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award and the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
The novel has no single main character. Key figures include General Sherman, Pearl (the mixed-race daughter of an enslaved woman named Nancy Wilkins), Colonel Wrede Sartorius (a German-trained field surgeon), Emily Thompson (a displaced Southern aristocrat from Milledgeville, Georgia), and two Confederate soldiers named Arly and Will who provide comic and tragic counterpoint.
Yes. Doctorow won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice: first in 1990 for Billy Bathgate, and again in 2006 for The March.
Yes. The Steppenwolf Theatre Company premiered a stage adaptation of The March in early 2012.
The novel concludes on the 14th of April 1865, when Lincoln is assassinated shortly after Lee's surrender. The final scene depicts the faint smell of gunpowder fading through a forest alongside the image of a fallen soldier's boot and shredded uniform lying in the dirt, leaving the characters' futures unresolved.