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| Editorial Reviews: | |  |  | Fully authorized by the Margaret Mitchell estate, Rhett Butler?s Peopleis the astonishing and long-awaited novel that parallels the Great American Novel, Gone With The Wind. Twelve years in the making, the publication of Rhett Butler?s Peoplemarks a major and historic cultural event.
Through the storytelling mastery of award-winning writer Donald McCaig, the life and times of the dashing Rhett Butler unfolds. Through Rhett?s eyes we meet the people who shaped his larger than life personality as it sprang from Margaret Mitchell?s unforgettable pages: Langston Butler, Rhett?s unyielding father; Rosemary his steadfast sister; Tunis Bonneau, Rhett?s best friend and a onetime slave; Belle Watling, the woman for whom Rhett cared long before he met Scarlett O?Hara at Twelve Oaks Plantation, on the fateful eve of the Civil War.
Of course there is Scarlett. Katie Scarlett O?Hara, the headstrong, passionate woman whose life is inextricably entwined with Rhett?s: more like him than she cares to admit; more in love with him than she?ll ever know?
Brought to vivid and authentic life by the hand of a master, Rhett Butler?s People fulfills the dreams of those whose imaginations have been indelibly marked by Gone With The Wind. | | | | Margaret Mitchell's story of Scarlett O'Hara's and Rhett Butler's beguiling, twisted love for each other, set against the gruesome background of a nation torn apart by war, is by all accounts epic--so much so that it feels untouchable. Yet McCaig's take on what many would consider a sacred cow of 20th-century American literature is a worthy suitor for Mitchell's many ardent fans, for reasons that may not be altogether obvious. It would be easy to look at Gone With the Wind and Rhett Butler?s People side by side and catalog what is accurate and what isn't and tally up the score. In doing so, however, the fan is apt to miss out on the best part of this whole book: Rhett Butler himself. McCaig's Rhett is thoroughly modern, both a product of his Charleston plantation and an emphatic rejection of it. He is filled with romance and ingenuity, grit and wit, and a toughness matched only by a sense of humility that evokes so gracefully the hardship and heartbreak of a society falling apart. It's not hard to love Rhett in his weakness for Scarlett's love, but it is entirely amazing to love him as he rescues Belle Watling, mentors her bright young son Tazewell, adores his sister Rosemary, dotes on dear Bonnie Blue, and defends his best friend Tunis Bonneau to the very end. To pluck a character from a beloved book and recalibrate the story's point-of-view isn't an easy thing to do. Ultimately, the new must ring true with the old, and this is where Rhett Butler?s People succeeds beyond measure. In the spirit of Mitchell's masterpiece, McCaig never questions that love--of family, lover, land, or country--is the tie that binds these characters to life, for better or worse. --Anne Bartholomew
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| Custom Reviews: | |
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| Rhett's Back and Badder Than Ever! | |
| | Rhett Butler's People, a novel by Donald McCaig (St. Martin's Press, $27.95).
Review by Amy Gray Light
It has been seventy-two years since the publication of Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gone With the Wind. Three years later it was made into an award-winning movie, culminating in a grand premiere in Atlanta in 1939 that brought out all of the movie's leading stars. Universally beloved since its publication, GWTW has sold twenty-eight million copies in many languages around the world. Mitchell was working on a sequel when she tragically died, and for these many decades, fans of the novel and movie have long been left to wonder the fate of two of the most famously star-crossed lovers since Romeo and Juliet.
Finally, we need wait no more.
Twelve years in the making, Rhett Butler's People, the sequel to GWTW, made its debut last fall to near-instant acclaim. Fully sanctioned by the Margaret Mitchell estate, Rhett Butler's People reveals what happened to some of the most colorful and well-known characters in fiction, as well as some vivid new ones. McCaig, the New York Times best-selling author of Jacob's Ladder and winner of the Michael Shaara Award for Civil War fiction for the same book, has written his newest novel through Rhett's eyes - Rhett Butler, possibly the most enigmatic and romantic character ever developed on a page. Rightly or wrongly, readers always knew Scarlett's point of view in GWTW. Rhett's motivation, however, remained unknown and his background always remained mysterious to us. Rhett Butler's People unveils his secrets and shares how his character was shaped to make him the renegade he became as an adult.
Beginning with his childhood in South Carolina, we are introduced to his parents, family members, and friends; learning of cruelties that caused him to turn his back on becoming the "proper gentleman" expected of a wealthy Plantation-owner's son. We see how Rhett is more progressive and socially conscious than many of the upper class of that time, and we learn why. We discover how he became such a successful blockade-runner. And we learn the truth of his relationship with Belle Watling, a relationship that shapes and colors the rest of their lives and many of those around them. Finally, we are allowed access into the psyche of this powerful man, which explains how he could become so obsessed with the one woman he could not possess.
Rhett Butler's People isn't just a re-telling of the original GWTW, with a tweak here and there to accommodate the original's plot, however. It has its own explanations of well-known events. This book stands on its own, just as compelling and full of suspense as GWTW. We finally learn what happens to familiar characters, like Ashley after Melanie's death, and Scarlett's younger sisters. But McCaig also introduces us to a set of characters as fleshed-out and full of life as any remembered from the original book. Rhett's sister and brother-in-law, for example, and a freed black man in particular, whose friendship with Rhett leads to one of the most compelling incidents in the novel.
Answering age-old questions that have long concerned fans of GWTW, such as whether or not Rhett and Scarlet ever got back together, where Rhett went after that fateful exit in Atlanta, and whatever happened to Scarlett's beloved Tara, readers will be captivated from the first chapter up to the surprising climax towards the end. McCaig has done a superb job of satisfying GWTW fans' expectations, as well as producing a remarkable book just as wonderfully written as the story it is based upon. This is one book you won't want to put down, and one you'll hate to have come to an end.
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| | Thanks to the author for giving us more!! | |
| | I personally am a avid GWTW fan and I really liked this book alot. Of course no author will ever equal MM. I picked it up 3 times and started the first chapter and put it down but when I finally got serious and gave it a chance, I ended up loving it! I didn't want it to end because that meant we were left to wait another umpteen years to get another one. I enjoyed reading more about what was going on in Rhett Butler's world while the GWTW story was going on. I have lived in SC all my life and my ancestry is from GA and I can tell you that much of the orginal GWTW and this book are true to what was really going on during that time. I am a genealogist and over and over again am reminded how close MM came to weaving her Jonesboro, GA family stories to her book. This guy odviously did his research and did well to convey SC's history also. With all that said; Give it a chance and enjoy more of the GWTW story. Bless Yall!
| | Love the voices he give his female characters | |
| | Entertaining and the person the does the reading on the CD does a good job.
| | | After the terrible mess that Alexandra Ripley made of the first authorized sequel I was hesitant to buy this, but I am glad I did.
Although there are some liberties taken, especially regarding Scarlett's, Melanie's and Ashley's relationship; I feel that this is the sequel that all GTW lovers have waited many years for.
I first read GWTW in 1970 and it has remained my favorite novel. When I heard the estate had authorized a sequel I waited impaitently for it only to discover that it was the worst book ever written, worse than cheap romance novels, there are no words to describe how awful I think her sequel was. Now finally, many lovers of GWTW have a sequel they feel is worthy of Margaret Mitchell's estate's approval. I hope they allow him to write another that picks up where it ends,
| | Better than Gone With The Wind | |
| | For years I've enjoyed the characters Margaret Mitchell created in Gone With The Wind and read Scarlett with high hopes. But not until I read Rhett Butler's People did I feel the story was complete. It was a great blend of familiar characters and civil war history. I didn't want to stop reading. Great summer read for Gone With The Wind fans
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