New ‘Gone With The Wind’ Sequel

Has A Newtown Connection

By Nancy K. Crevier

An editor from St Martin’s Press. A book column in the August 5 issue of The Montgomery Advertiser in Alabama. The second sequel to Gone With The Wind due to hit the book stores in November. Newtown. What is the connection?

To figure it out, it is necessary to go back to the Sand Hill Plaza, circa 1999. At that time, Newtown was home to an independent bookstore, The Book Review, where owners Scott Bell and Camilla Crist had worked diligently since 1991 to provide the latest, most interesting, and provocative books to Newtown readers. Ms Crist acted as the decorator and merchandiser for the book store and that summer decided to promote the Donald McCaig novel Jacob’s Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the Civil War.

Little did she know that the executive editor of St Martin’s Press would stop in, become enchanted by the book, and pursue the author as the next long-sought author for the second sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 classic southern epic, Gone With The Wind.

St Martin’s Press, which held the rights to publish the sequel, following 1991’s Scarlett by Alexandria Ripley, had searched fruitlessly to find just the right author, according to Thomas Upchurch, owner of Capitol Book & News Company in Montgomery, Ala., and author of a bi-weekly book column in The Montgomery Advertiser.

His curiosity was piqued this summer when a sales representative from St Martin’s Press mentioned that after eight long years the release of the newest Gone With The Wind sequel was imminent, and that the author had been discovered by an editor who had walked into a bookstore and discovered another novel by Mr McCaig.

“Being a bookstore owner, I had to find out who and where that bookstore was,” said Mr Upchurch in a recent phone interview with The Bee. He poked about until the editor, Hope Dellon, prodded her own memory and shared with him her recall of the event. As Mr Upchurch wrote in his August 5 column, Ms Dellon had dropped her daughter off at ballet lessons in Monroe, decided to kill some time in nearby Newtown and discovered The Book Review. The display of Jacob’s Ladder set up by Ms Crist caught her eye, and before she knew it, she was immersed in the novel. She picked up her child from ballet, took the book back to St Martin’s, and a deal was struck with Mr McCaig to write Rhett Butler’s People.

Rhett Butler’s People is scheduled for release on November 6 of this year. It covers the years between 1843 and 1874 as Rhett Butler meets and courts Scarlett O’Hara, said Mr Upchurch. For those who loved the original story, it will offer a new insight into the lives of the characters created by Margaret Mitchell.

The Book Review closed in 2001, and no other independent bookstore now exists in the town. It well may be that this serendipitous encounter that allowed Newtown to play a bit part in the creation of a much-anticipated novel will be its claim to fame in the publishing world.

“We are truly thrilled to be a tiny part of an exciting new book,” said Ms Crist, who now lives in Litchfield with Mr Bell. “The infamous book was just part of the entire picture.”

And now, as Mr Upchurch wrote in his column, “You know the whole story.”