The March novel follows General William Tecumseh Sherman as he leads 60,000 troops through the South in late 1864. The story depicts a 96 km wide scar of destruction from Atlanta to Savannah where soldiers live off the land by pillaging homes and burning crops.
Pearl is the young daughter of an enslaved woman named Nancy Wilkins and her white master. Colonel Wrede Sartorius carries a surgical hacksaw with him everywhere he goes while Emily Thompson becomes his lover and assistant after fleeing Milledgeville, Georgia.
Lincoln dies on the 14th of April 1865 shortly after Lee surrenders his forces. The final scene shows gunpowder smell dissipating through a forest landscape with a fallen soldier lying in the dirt wearing a shredded uniform and one boot.
The March won the 2006 PEN/Faulkner fiction award following Doctorow's previous win in 1990. It also received the 2005 National Book Critics Award during its release year and became a finalist for both the 2006 Pulitzer Prize and the 2005 National Book Award.
E. L. Doctorow researched historical events to construct a fictionalized account of Sherman's military operations by studying the actual timeline from late 1864 to early 1865 carefully. His research informed how he depicted the destruction caused by living off the land orders while building his narrative around real decisions made by General William Tecumseh Sherman.