Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- The much loved cad of ``Gone with the Wind'' is being resurrected tomorrow, when Donald McCaig's novel ``Rhett Butler's People'' lands in bookstores. The novel imagines Rhett's South Carolina childhood, a failed stint at West Point, fortune-hunting in San Francisco and New Orleans and, of course, his love life in and out of Scarlett O'Hara's bed.
This is the second authorized sequel to Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel. The first was Alexandra Ripley's rather tawdry 1991 ``Scarlett,'' which critics derided as hackwork; readers didn't give a damn and bought 6 million copies from Warner Books.
In the wake of that enthusiasm, St. Martin's Press paid the Mitchell estate a generous $4.5 million in 1994 for the rights to publish Rhett's story -- which is finally appearing now, with an optimistic first printing of 2 million copies.
The intervening 13 years have been a saga in themselves. The original writer -- Emma Tennant, the well-regarded British author of, among other titles, ``Pemberley,'' a sequel to Jane Austen's ``Pride and Prejudice'' -- was bounced from the project after delivering a manuscript deemed too British. Pat Conroy, a South Carolinian, agreed to take over, calling the sequel the book he was born to write, but he and the estate could never agree on terms, according to St. Martin's Press president and publisher Sally Richardson.
In 2000, McCaig -- then best known as the author of books about dogs -- got the nod after an editor traveling through the South stumbled on his 1999 Civil War novel, ``Jacob's Ladder.''
Not a Sequel
Richardson denies that ``Rhett Butler's People'' is a sequel. ``It's a companion that explores the same material from a different angle,'' she says. ``The Mitchell estate wanted a book with more gravitas, one that is worthy of the original, which is what McCaig has written. And he doesn't overdo it.''
Presumably the Mitchell estate has vetted the book. In the past it has been very protective. Witness its 2001 lawsuit against Alice Randall and her publisher, Houghton Mifflin, for copyright infringement over ``The Wind Done Gone,'' Randall's thinly veiled version of ``Gone with the Wind'' told from the point of view of a slave named Cynara.
The suit was settled when Houghton Mifflin agreed to sell the book under the label ``unauthorized parody'' and to make a donation, at the Mitchell estate's behest, to Morehouse College in Atlanta.
Martin's Memoir
Steve Martin offers his own backstory in the surprisingly tender ``Born Standing Up,'' which Scribner will publish on Nov. 20. The memoir moves from his childhood in Waco, Texas, through his early gigs at Knott's Berry Farm and his first television appearances, to his final standup engagements in the late 1970s.
Martin, who prided himself on being a comic who didn't rely on punch lines, has established his literary bona fides in essays for the New Yorker magazine, two novellas (``Shopgirl'' and ``The Pleasure of My Company''), plays (``Picasso at the Lapin Agile'') and, last month, his first children's book, ``The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z,'' for which he teamed up with cartoonist Roz Chast.
Independent bookstores in particular are championing Martin's memoir. The 1,200 member stores of the American Booksellers Association Book Sense program have selected it as their top pick to promote in December -- a break that should help Scribner run through its first printing of 500,000 copies.
McCourt's Return
Another holiday item is Frank McCourt's ``Angela and the Baby Jesus,'' which comes out tomorrow. It tells the tale of a 6-year-old Irish girl -- McCourt's mother, the title character of his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1996 memoir ``Angela's Ashes'' -- who takes the holy infant from a church manger and brings it home, convinced it needs warmth and looking after. Simon & Schuster is publishing a total of 300,000 copies in two versions. One, for children, is illustrated with cheerful, optimistic watercolors. The other, for adults, is printed in a smaller format, with drawings in a more ominous palette that evokes the grim setting of ``Angela's Ashes.''
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