Gone With the Wind

The stirring drama of the Civil War and Reconstruction is brought vividly to life in this really magnificent novel.

Scarlett O'Hara, born of a gently bred mother from the feudal aristocracy of the Georgia Coast and an Irish peasant father, inherited charm from the one and from the other the determination and drive that enabled her to survive the wreckage of war.

As the belle of the county, spoiled, selfish, Scarlett arrives at young womanhood just in time to see the Civil War sweep away the life for which her upbringing had prepared her. After the fall of Atlanta she returns to the plantation and by stubborn shrewdness saves both from Sherman and the carpet baggers. But in the process she hardens. She has neared starvation and she vows never to be hungry again. In the turmoil of Reconstruction she battles her way to affluence. Scarlett's friend, Melanie Wilkes, of finer fibre, meets the same hardships with equal courage and better grace. Scarlett uses any available weapon; Melanie refuses to break with her ideals. Side by side with Scarlett and Melanie are the two men who love them: Ashley Wilkes, for whom the world died at Appomattox; and Rhett Butler, blockade runner and charming scoundrel, who is drawn to Scarlett because she is as unscrupulous as he.

The story epitomizes the whole drama of the South under the impact of the War and its aftermath. The ruggedness and strength of north Georgia's red hills are in the characters bluff, blustering Gerald O'Hara; Ellen, his wife; Mammy, who both loved and chastened Ellen's daughters; the rollicking Tarleton twins; the quick-tempered and murderous Fontaines; stately John Wilkes, and a host of others, white and black, forming a rich picture of Southern life.

Not a war novel, except as the War affected the lives of people of the South, the of Scarlett is written with a rare sensitiveness and skill.