In 1864 William Tecumseh Sherman made Civil War history with his infamous March to the Sea across Georgia. More than a century later, Jerry Ellis set out along the same route in search of the past and his southern and Cherokee heritage.

On Ellis's trek by foot from Atlanta to Savannah, he confronts the contradictions and complexities of his native region as he reflects on his own. From Macon's fabled Goat Man to Arthur "Cowboy" Brown, the Savannah street musician, we meet a vibrant, unregimented people, all of whom, like Ellis, are looking for their place with one eye on the past and one on the present.