In 1864 William Tecumseh Sherman led a throbbing, hooting, violent river of 62,000 soldiers through the heart of the American South. Intending to end the Civil War by depriving the Confederacy of its "breadbasket," Sherman's March turned into a carnival of destruction and pillaging, trailing wagon loads of plunder, throngs of stolen animals, and hundreds of dazed civilians. In the end, the raucous swath of devastation stretched from Atlanta to the sea at Savannah. In military terms, the march was a great success: It brought the Confederacy to its knees.More than a hundred years later, Jerry Ellis, inveterate traveler, storyteller, and adventurer, set off to walk from Atlanta to Savannah using Sherman's route as his guide. Searching for the living, breathing artifacts of a nation's most bitter war, Ellis was also a man in search of his own South.In today's South Ellis found not only living memories of the Great Lost Cause - and, in one case, of General Sherman himself - but a vibrant American culture of blacks and whites, of young people and old-timers grappling with such issues as racism and social justice. He slept by cemeteries, shared ice-cold soft drinks in a wood-floored general store, met a wandering folk hero called the Goat Man in a Macon nursing home, and heard the marvelous music of a madcap ex-Marine wanderer on the moss-draped streets of Savannah.