Rhett Butler's People: The New Gone with the Wind Novel

On November 6, 2007, St. Martin's Press will release Rhett Butler's People telling the beloved story of Gone with the Wind from the perspective of Rhett Butler. Rhett Butler, the charming anti-hero of Gone with the Wind, is the focus of this new work by noted novelist Donald McCaig.

Chosen by the Margaret Mitchell estate to write a new sequel to the classic novel Gone With the Wind, Donald McCaig is known for his civil war novel, Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia, and reconstruction novel, Canaan: A Novel of the Reunited States after the War. A copywriter turned sheep farmer, McCaig is also known for his writing on rural life and dogs. Critics respect McCaig's careful prose and his attention to historical detail. With this background, McCaig was chosen to undertake the writing of a second sequel to Gone With the Wind.

Rhett Butler's People is the second novel to re-examine the lives of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara in the South during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Rhett Butler's People follows Rhett Butler's life across the South from 1843 to 1874. We all know how Butler courted the indomitable Scarlett O'Hara of Gone With the Wind. In Rhett Butler's People, we learn how Rhett first met Belle Watling. Butler's troubled relationship with his Charleston family is also told in the new account. Of course the novel details Rhett Butler's tortured relationship with Scarlett O'Hara.

For fans of both Gone with the Wind and history, Rhett Butler's People will be able to correct the romanticized view of the South that Margaret Mitchell captured in her 1936 novel, Gone With the Wind. Given that Rhett Butler moved around the South more than Scarlett O"Hara, Rhett Butler's People will be able to capture in greater detail the multiple experiences of slaves, poor whites, and slave-owners in the years preceding and following the Civil War.