First published 2006
General William Tecumseh Sherman commands 60,000 Union soldiers as they cut a sixty-mile swath of destruction through Georgia and the Carolinas near the Civil War's end. The march displaces everyone in its path. Pearl, daughter of a white plantation owner and his slave, navigates her newfound freedom amid the chaos. Colonel Sartorius, a cold and methodical army surgeon, treats the wounded with robotic precision. Union and Confederate officers clash as the campaign unfolds. Two soldiers, Arly and Will, provide moments of dark humor until war strips away their levity. Southern whites like Mattie Jameson lose everything they once knew. Sherman emerges as a brilliant but unhinged tactician facing his West Point peers across battle lines. The army pillages each conquered town for supplies in the ancient tradition of Greek and Roman forces. War becomes its own mindless force, disconnected from any noble cause or moral foundation.
Genres: american-civil-war, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, war, 19th-century
Vibes: dark, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: conflict, war
Setting: Georgia, Carolinas
Period: Civil War
384 pages · Paperback · Little, Brown Book Group
Content warnings: violence, war