Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind
By: Margaret Mitchell
Time to read: 3 weeks
Pages: 1024

This is one of my all-time favorite books. Next to Harry Potter, which this was a time filler to read before I start Deathly Hollows.

I've always been interested in the Civil War from a Southern point of view, and this book is the epitome of Southern living in the 1860s. The book opens in 1861 with a 16-year old Scarlett O'Hara flirting with twin brothers on the front porch of her large, Southern plantation, Tara. The book progresses through the war years, Reconstruction and then post-reconstruction time.

Scarlett moves from Tara, which is 25 miles south of Atlanta, to Atlanta during the war. Much to her dismay she is forced to work in hospitals and help dying soldiers. She flees Atlanta right before Sherman burns it to the ground on his infamous march to the sea.

After the war she is forced to completly rebuild her family's plantation..for the first time in her life she is forced to work along side the black people who have always done her bidding. Then she is in constant fear of Carpetbaggers or Yankees coming to kill, rape or steal everything that she has worked so hard to build up after the war.

I won't say too much about the love triangle in the book between Scarlett, Rhett and Ashley. Essentially she thinks she loves Ashley, and she realizes too late that it's really Rhett she loves.

I love this book a lot, and I hadn't read it in about two or three years. But re-reading it as a more mature reader made me able to better analyze the characters and their motives. Rhett is nothing but a cynical ass hole, who deeply loves Scarlett. If Scarlett lived today, she would be some big wig corporate exec., but since she lived in the 1860s, she was considered 'fast,' 'manly' and many other things. But, I admire her just the same.

I'm not much for the movie Gone with the Wind, but the book is great. If you like historical fiction I would definately reccommend it!

Four stars!