Gone With The Wind

OH… MY…. GOD…., I loved this book for so many reasons!! I see why she won the Pulitzer when Margaret Mitchell wrote this phenomenal book. So, there’s a little history here… I grew up with a Mom who loved the movie and her and I and my sister would designate once a month as “girl’s night” and watch “Gone With The Wind” and “Somewhere In Time” and cry and be girls. Then, years later (OK, a least a decade) after marrying and no longer able to do the monthly movie night with Mom, it is a book club pick and I find myself reading the book from a beloved movie for the first time. Let me just say that as much as I LOVE the movie, it is the same with all the rest…. the book is ALWAYS better! I learned so much about the South and the Confederacy and the Civil War era than I had ever gleaned from history books or classes and even the movie. I even see the KKK in a different light and understand why and how it came into existence back in those times. Could you imagine as a state leaving the Union and fighting a war to be allowed to continue with your way of life and then spend years after you lost the war having to put up with corruption and not having a vote in your own governance? The book itself is a bit intimidating at almost 1000 pages but it is so worth the read! The best part for me? Realizing that all those girl’s nights with Mom watching Scarlett O’Hara be the strong woman she was and not caring what others thought of her actions might have had something to do with molding me into the headstrong and fearless woman I am today.