Scarlett

I know I'm a hopeless romantic but I'm also a lover of books so it all works out. Last night I finished the sequel to Gone with the Wind. I can't even begin to explain how much I loved it - except that it was 823 pages and I was desperately sad when it was over. It was a smile, a hug of the book and a deep, deep sigh......

But the reason I'm blogging about it - other than to encourage any fans of Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler to go out and read it - is that when I first read the reviews of a few folks they found it so unbelievable that this was the Scarlett of the earlier book. According to them she would NEVER have done the things she did in the book. And I say BLARNEY!!! Scarlett was 18, I think, to start the first book. I can't recall how many years pass but by the time the second book begins she's 30 and the new book chronicles those next 5-6 years.

When I first started reading the book, I was alarmed. I read the book in fourth grade and LOVED Scarlett. She was bull-headed and beautiful and strong and smart and loved business and was a hopeless (and I mean that word) romantic. I set my sites on growing up to be just like her. Except I didn't see then what I know now - she was horribly, dreadfully, painfully self-absorbed. She was horrible. And I started to sink in my seat. I've been getting billboard after billboard about this - my own favorite sin. I think God's been trying to stomp the wicked thing right out of me - my pride that is.

Anyway, so as not to give away the plot, I won't elaborate but the sequel follows her through some lifechanging experiences. Wonderful, beautiful experiences and painful and devastating ones as well. And by the time it's all over - she's not the Scarlett she once was. And my question is - who of us is the same at 35 that we were in our early 20's? To those nay-sayers that claim that the Scarlett of old could never compare, I shrug and say that is true. But life grows us up. Thank God, He doesn't leave us the way He finds us.

How vain that I compare myself to this monument of fiction!!! Not so much that but for asmuch as I'm NOT CRAZY - books have a way of creating a relationship. And I've loved her in that book - the good, the bad, and the ugly. No one EVER said that Scarlett wasn't messed up. She really really really was ALWAYS messed up. And so am I - still. But I'm ever so pleased that life has squeezed some of that out of me - as it did her.

I will hold onto this book because Daddy gave it Nana for a birthday because she loved that story. But I'm thinking maybe I need to get those plates from him. Nana has always loved Gone with the Wind. And it seems so have I......