Shaara continues to be one of my favorite author's whose books I consistently look forward to coming out, and this one was no exception (though I let it languish for too long in the unread pile). Regardless this book provides a wonderful insight into the eyes and minds of the soldiers of the Union and Confederacy from just after Sherman's Burning of Atlanta, finishing his March to the Sea through Savannah, Charleston, into North Carolina culminating with Johnston's surrender. You see the war through the eyes of the generals, captains, and a freed slave (oddly no private level soldier as Shaara tends to), getting their points of view as it becomes increasingly clear that the Union is crushing the Confederacy and any chance of a Southern victory becomes fruitless.
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As good as any he has written. Jeff continues to be one of if not the best Historical Novelists.

The Fateful Lightning is the fourth and final book in Jeff Shaara’s story of the Civil War as it was fought in the American “west..” The story covers the time period between Atlanta and the end of the war. The reader gets the impression that the Union armies sweep the South, almost unopposed. Shaara tells the story by alternating among four main points of view:.,prime among them, W.T. Sherman; most notable, that of "Franklin", a former slave who attaches himself to Sherman's army. This is a LONG listen--25 hours. It could stand to be shorter. ( )

This fictionalized account of the "March to the Sea" by General Sherman and its immediate aftermath near the end of the Civil War has good and bad points.

As with Shaara’s other books in this series of novels on the Civil War, it’s hard to go wrong with such great characters like Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman.

Sherman takes center stage in this book, with his march first to Savannah and then back north for an anticipated military rendezvous with Grant, a move which became unnecessary after the surrender by Lee to Grant at Appomattox. Historians have pointed to many factors contributing to Sherman’s success, including the influence of his West Point training, his personal charisma, his intellectual energy, his past work experience which gave him intimate knowledge of the American terrain, an excellent command of logistics, and last but not least the brilliance of his strategic thinking. Shaara doesn’t really acquaint us with much of this. Mostly, we encounter Sherman’s thoughts about the weather, about his son, about his wife, about his respect for Grant, and his loathing of journalists and the fickle nature of politics. This is very much a book about quotidian thoughts people might have been having as they were slogging through the muck and mire to and from battles.

This quintessential example will give you an idea of (a) the content of much of the book; (b) the staccato and repetitive style of writing; and (c) why it is so very long. This scene occurs in Georgia, late at night when Sherman is once again having a sleepless night:

“He moved to the nearest fire, picked up a stick, prodded the faint embers. The ground around him was soggy from the rain, the fire nearly extinguished, but he poked harder, deeper, the embers growing brighter. He was determined now, searched the darkness for something to add to the flame, some kind of kindling, saw a stack of small sticks, covered by a canvas cloth. He pulled out a single stick, smelled it, the delicious scent of fat pine, used that to prod the embers until the heat ignited the stick. He let the flame crawl upward toward his hand, tilted it away, then added the fat pine to the glowing embers. He retrieved another . . . ”

And on and on. . . .

Shaara chooses to tell this story by alternating among four main points of view: Union General Sherman, Confederate General William Hardee, Southern cavalryman Captain James Seely, and a young male slave from Georgia named Franklin. Franklin’s story is perhaps the most interesting, and Shaara is to be commended for trying to show what that time period was like for the slaves who were able to abandon their plantations and attach themselves to Sherman’s Army.

In his Afterword, Shaara tells what befell the main actors in the story after the end of the Civil War. He includes a paragraph about Franklin mixed in with the nonfictional characters, but without indicating that Franklin’s “fate” is a product of his imagination.

Evaluation: It has to be said that with material like Sherman’s March to the Sea, it’s pretty hard not to make a pretty good story out of it. I would have liked to see some editing of the long interior monologues of some of the characters, and more attention paid to Sherman’s strategical thinking, but it was still an enjoyable book. ( )

The Fateful Lightning is the fourth and final book in Jeff Shaara’s story of the Civil War as it was fought in the American “west.” The book, a detailed account regarding Sherman’s “March to the Sea,” follows three previous novels dedicated to the battles of Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. As in each of the books preceding this one, Shaara tells his story by allowing the reader to walk in the boots of several key real-life characters from both sides of the tragic struggle.

As it should be, the book’s primary focus is on Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, the chief engineer behind the slash and burn ride that hastened the end of the war. In addition to seeing the march from Sherman’s point of view, Shaara has his readers do the same from the points of view of two of Sherman’s adversaries: General William Joseph Hardee and Captain James Seeley, a Confederate cavalryman. And, interestingly, the book’s fourth main character is a slave known throughout the book only as Franklin because he has never even considered the possibility of having a first name of his own. (When first questioned by the Union officer who befriends him, Franklin is not even sure whether Franklin is a first or a last name – all he knows is that it is his only name.)

The Fateful Lightning begins on November 16, 1864 as Sherman begins to move his army out of Atlanta, a city that has been largely destroyed as a result of his army having taken it. It ends on April 25, 1865 (seventeen days after Lee’s surrender of his army to Grant) in Raleigh, North Carolina, when Sherman receives the letter that will finally allow him to relax: Confederate general Johnston’s surrender of the largest segment of the Confederate army still in the field. From that moment, the American Civil War is effectively over.

Sherman was a complicated man, one I have had mixed emotions about for a very long time. With time, I have come to be an admirer of his military skills and his willingness to fight a “total war” on the South in order to end the fighting as quickly as possible. But as a born and bred Southerner, I have long wished that Southern civilians had not had to suffer so greatly at his hands. For that reason, I think that the real beauty of Jeff Shaara’s historical fiction is the way it humanizes historical figures to a degree that makes them – be they sympathetic ones or more questionable ones – the real people they were, with all the weaknesses and doubts that the rest of us have.

I have read a lot of Civil War history in the last few decades, much of it associated with Sherman’s “march.” But I can honestly say that after reading The Fateful Lightning, I have a better understanding of that famous (which is still more “infamous” than “famous” to most Southerners) campaign than I had coming in to it. At well over 600 pages in length, this one takes a while, but it is time well spent. ( )