Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

No novel will ever be an adequate sequel to "Gone With The Wind," and no writer will ever "complete" Mitchell's story. "Gone With The Wind" is an American epic, the tale of the fall of a doomed civilization and the dissolution and reunification of the Union. Against that backdrop, Mitchell portrayed a passionate, tragic romance between two characters with whom readers themselves fall in love. No author will ever recapture the magic of the original, whether in a prequel, sequel, or "other story," because the novel is complete "as is." Like any work of fiction, the work ends where it ends. In the case of GWTW, the reader is left longing for answers, just as Scarlett longed for Ashley, Rhett longed for Scarlett, and, at the novel's conclusion, Scarlett schemes to win Rhett back. Mitchell wrote with conviction and zeal, because the story was one that she knew well -- she'd grown up among people who had lived through and fought in the Civil War and then endured the humiliation and struggles of the Reconstruction period. Basically (the literary critics are going to kill me for this), GWTW is the American "War and Peace," and Scarlett O'Hara is our Natasha. We will never know what happens to Rhett and Scarlett, however, because Mitchell, a consummate storyteller, didn't choose tell us. That said -- I am enjoying "Rhett Butler's People," because it's not a bad read and tells a story of its own. Those reviewers who are proclaiming that the book is "awful" are, I think, merely pining for the original. I recommend "Rhett Butler's People" to anyone who is not so attached to Mitchell's novel and characters that he or she can't put aside GWTW and take McCaig's book on its own terms. If you view McCaig, not as trying to complete GWTW, but rather as imagining -- as any author does -- what Rhett Butler's history might have been, this is an engaging novel with which to while away a winter's afternoon.