Okay, you may wonder why I would suffer any guilt in enjoying this book so let me explain. I am a *huge* Gone with the Wind fan. Not just the movie but the book also. I have read all 1024 pages 12 times and I have no idea how many times I’ve seen the movie. That said, I have always considered myself a GWTW “purist”. When “Scarlett” the so-called sequel by Alexandra Ripley came out in the 1990s, I refused to read it. In fact I went so far as to refuse to touch it–at the time I was a shelver at my local library and whenever the book came through the bookdrop on my watch I would go find someone else to check it in and shelve it because I didn’t want to go near it. The very idea of a sequel to Ms. Mitchell’s perfect book rankled me and I felt that reading it would somehow sully or cheapen the original. I knew that Ms. Mitchell had been asked repeatedly for a sequel during her lifetime and always said that the story was over. Although, like every other GWTW fan I wondered whether or not Scarlett & Rhett would get back together, I preferred to keep the mystery alive. So I’ve never cracked open a copy of Scarlett, although I have on occasion accidentally touched one–they show up a lot in library donations. I have to admit that I watched part of the mini-series–two hours of my life that I profoundly regret, but I have managed to block the memory of it for the most part.

So now over fifteen years later I hear about this new book that tells the story of GWTW from Rhett’s point of view. I couldn’t wait to read it! I don’t know how I’ve managed to justify reading this book when I still cringe at the site of a ”Scarlett” bookcover but I have wrestled the demons and come out on top. And I am loving it! I am only about a fourth of the way through the book, Rhett has only  just met Scarlett, but it is great fun. McCaig really knows Rhett’s character and he knows the story of GWTW perhaps as well as I do. Whether the book goes beyond Scarlett & Rhett’s parting I don’t know yet. And if it does, I’m not certain I’ll be able to read past that part because I still hold true to Ms. Mitchell’s assertion that “The End” was on page 1024 and the rest is up to the imagination. I suppose I’ll cross that page when I come to it.