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Sheep farmer pens bestseller
BY MARGO OXENDINE • STAFF WRITER
 | | Highland County author Donald McCaig signed copies of his new bestseller, "Rhett Butler's People," at the Bath County Public Library last Thursday. Lisa Schoppmeyer, right, owner of The Bookkeeper bookstore in Covington, brought along a bag of books to be signed. He donated half the proceeds from brisk book sales after the reading to the Bath Animal Welfare Foundation. (Recorder photo by Margo Oxendine) |
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WARM SPRINGS - At first glance, it may have seemed like an ordinary night at the library. A nice-sized crowd filled every chair, some reduced to perching on stepstools, or simply standing on the sidelines.
They were there to hear a local author talk about his latest book. He seemed an ordinary man, perhaps speaking about an ordinary book, one that, because of his connection to the area, might achieve ordinary acclaim. But nothing was ordinary about this night.
The book was "Rhett Butler's People," now No. 12 on the New York Times bestseller list. The author was Highland County sheep farmer Donald McCaig, no newcomer to the publishing world.
We've all loved "Nop's Trials," "Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men," and "An American Homeplace." Fans of McCaig's fiction span far further than the Highlands. McCaig's "Jacob's Ladder" was designated the "best Civil War novel ever written" by the Virginia Quarterly; it won the Michael Shaara Award for Civil War fiction, and also the Library of Virginia award for fiction.
"Rhett Butler's People," McCaig's latest, might truly catapult the humble, homespun fellow into the pantheon of American writers. Don't call it a sequel to "Gone with the Wind."
"It's interlaced; it's sort of a parallel work to Margaret Mitchell's book," McCaig explained. "I've written some things that she did not, and some things that she did."
McCaig spent six years writing his latest novel. He started from scratch; in a fascinating twist of irony, he had never read Mitchell's book, never seen the movie. In fact, writing the novel wasn't even McCaig's idea.
"It took me six years to write it, and I figure that's fair enough," he said. "It took them six years to find a writer. I figure they had to be pretty desperate before they came up here and found a sheep farmer in Highland County. They were sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel," he laughed.
McCaig was busy at home, tending his sheep, when the letter came from his publisher, St. Martin's Press. Would he be interested, they wondered, in penning a sequel to "Gone with the Wind?" This turn of events occurred because of a popular previous book of McCaig's, "Jacob's Ladder." When St. Martin's was ready to issue it in paperback, they needed a blurb for the cover. They chose one from "People" magazine: "Think Cold Mountain; think Gone with the Wind."
The publishers had been working closely with the executors of Mitchell's estate - two "nearly 90-year-old gentlemen" lawyers who were once partners with the late author's brother and heir, Stephen Mitchell. St. Martin's had sent all sorts of books to the executors. "A lot of them were romance novels. The estate didn't think they were very good, and they probably weren't," McCaig laughed.
Then came the fateful day a St. Martin's editor walked into an airport bookstore, spied "Jacob's Ladder," saw the blurb, and read a few pages.
"He called the publishers and said, 'We've got it! Send it to Atlanta!' and they did," McCaig told the crowd. The executors agreed they'd found their man. It was time for McCaig to get to work. First, he had to read Mitchell's novel. Then Anne McCaig performed a wifely labor of love.
"I only read the book once, but Anne went through it chapter by chapter and wrote a kind of 'Cliff Notes' for me. It had a time line - what happened and when - it had all the action, and all the characters mentioned in each chapter. Anytime I wanted to pinpoint something, I didn't have to go back to the book; I just hit the 'find' button on my computer, and could track down all the references. That was enormously useful."
The fact that McCaig is now working with a computer did not escape notice of his fans and friends in the audience.
"So, you do use a computer now?" one called out.
"Yeah," McCaig admitted with a grin. "The computer probably costs me about $500 a year, and my old manual typewriter was maybe 50 bucks every two years for new ribbons. But unfortunately, with the manual, you couldn't just hit a button and send it to New York."
"Rhett Butler's People" hit the book world like a summer hurricane. "It's been simultaneously published in eight or nine different countries," said McCaig. "I didn't know that until all of a sudden people started showing up with French and German editions for me to sign."
McCaig spent a whirlwind month after the book's November release traversing the United States, promoting his novel, signing copies - once as many as 800 in a day - and staying in posh hotel rooms. It was not the type of life to which a sheep farmer yearns to become accustomed.
Naturally, any parallel novel to "Gone with the Wind," even if it centers on Rhett Butler's history and experiences, must also revolve around that quintessential Southern belle, Scarlett O'Hara.
Scarlett is not a woman who evokes sympathy from Donald McCaig. "Scarlett is a great character," he said. "I wouldn't cross the street to shake her hand. But, she's real person, and that's pretty extraordinary. Yeah, she's a pain in the butt, but she's also courageous, she's loyal, she's shrewd, she's also probably semi-literate; she's all these things. You set her against any other woman character in American literature, and they look like cartoons. They're just one-dimensional in comparison to Scarlett. I don't care for her very much, but she is in many respects admirable. I kind of liked her in a way, and in a way I think she was a twerp."
McCaig's take on Margaret Mitchell is this: "She never used one word when two words would do. Most of it I really liked; some parts are just great, and other parts, you couldn't turn through the pages fast enough, like when Scarlett was dreaming about Ashley. Margaret Mitchell needed a better editor than she had. But," he added, "that section right after the war, when Scarlett's alone on Tara, taking care of things, that's just wonderful stuff."
McCaig's focus on Rhett rights, he believes, one of the oddities of the first book: What do we really know about Rhett? When he vanishes for months at a time, where does he go? What does he do? How does he earn all that money?
"Most importantly," McCaig noted, "this is a Southern novel by a Southern writer. What's the first question we Southerners ask? It's, Who are your people? I thought this would be a way of doing" the novel. "It starts a little bit before 'Gone with the Wind' and covers the same ground, some of the same scenes, and it ends about a year and a half after … That's why it took six years."
McCaig's novel is about 500 pages. "That's a lot of words," he laughed. "Some of them are well-chosen."
Find out more at www.rhettbutlerspeople.com. Locally, copies can also be found at your public library, but you'll have to get on the waiting list.
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