‘Butler’s People’ revisits ‘GWTW’ character

Though Rhett Butler’s stony departure was the justice Scarlett O’Hara deserved, will she have to pay for her selfish ways for the rest of her life?

Will Rhett ever put aside his pride and sarcasm, and just accept that of all the women in the world, he fell for one with a fire just as bright and hot as his own?

Thanks to a laid-back, sheep-farming, award-winning author and poet who hadn’t even read “Gone With the Wind” until it was his turn to write a sequel, we finally know.

Donald McCaig’s “Rhett Butler’s People” (St. Martin’s Press, 512 pages, $27.95) was published last month after 12 years in the making.

McCaig, whose works include the Civil War novel “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Canaan: A Novel of Post-Civil War America,” says he didn’t really know how “GWTW” fans would react to his retelling of Margaret Mitchell’s story.

“I knew perfectly well that a lot of people would have all kinds of expectations for ‘Rhett Butler’s People,’ ” he says.

“Some thought it might be a lot of fun, and some were horrified by the very idea. It was kind of unpredictable.”

In his book, McCaig tells Rhett’s backstory. We learn how he grew up; what enemies he made; why he wasn’t “received” by any of the fine families of Charleston, S.C.; and what he went off to do during those spells when Scarlett was tending Tara, Melly or her latest husband.

The story begins years before the Civil War and continues well into Reconstruction.

Although McCaig heard that representatives of Mitchell’s estate presented restrictions in talks with other writers before he got on board, he said he faced no such conditions. Racist language, however, was a concern.

“When we first met, Hal Clarke (one of the representatives) said, `Some people have got problems with Margaret Mitchell’s racial …’ He didn’t say any more. It was one of those half-sentences.

“And I replied, ‘Well, she was a Southern writer of her time and I’m a Southern writer of our time.’ “

The n-word is littered throughout Mitchell’s book and it is also part of McCaig’s. He answers for his use of that word again by saying “it was throughout the original and, of course, it was contemporary with the time.”

Plus, he said, many might agree that his Rhett likely thinks differently than Mitchell’s Rhett did.

“It’s the kind of thing where my Rhett Butler acted like some Southern aristocrats did during that period,” he says.

“Everybody says everybody in the South believed one thing. And that simply isn’t true. People had a variety of different viewpoints, from extreme and murderous racism to tolerance to acceptance.”