Scoundrel may possibly be the sexiest word in the English language.
As a nerdy adolescent, I fell in love with one fictonal hero after another... the brooding Mr Rochester, the tortured Edmund Dantes and, of course, my beloved Mr Darcy. But above all these, there was always ...Rhett Butler.
I read Gone With The Wind for the first time at the age of eleven. Much too young to read that book, I assure you. My mother was out of town that summer and my father had dumped my brother and I at my grandmother's house until she returned. My grandmother lived in a smallish farmhouse in a very rural area. To say that I was bored would be a colossal understatement. Gone With The Wind was the only book in my grandmother's house other than the Bible. I had seen bits and pieces of the movie and had been unimpressed. But, at that point, I would have read a toothpaste tube for entertainment. So I settled onto the swing hanging on my grandmother's front porch and read for what felt like two straight days.
I have reread the book a few times since that summer. And like most great novels, it changes as my life does. (I was 33 years old, for instance, before I realized why Scarlett was so ridiculously happy the morning after Rhett carried her up those stairs :) ) But I have to admit that it was not until I read Rhett Butler's People that I began to see what was most captivating about that notorious man.
I was hesitant to read this book. Anyone who had the misfortune to read the last "sequel" named Scarlett can understand my trepidation. I fully expected this book to be just as horrible. It wasn't.
Donald McCaig's novel is more of an expansion than a sequel. It begins at the same point as GWTW and ends several years after Mr Butler proclaimed that he didn't "give a damn." He avoids cliches and all the obvious, melodramatic devices that could have easily cluttered this book. Through Rhett, the reader gets a fully realized study of character and setting as he struggles with the idea of slavery, patriotism, and intricate family dynamics.
Overall, this book, like GWTW is built around the relationship between Rhett and Scarlett. After reading this, I'm left with the same impression that I formed some 23 years ago. The idea that love built upon recognition of yourself within another is a powerful force.
