Scarlett; by Alexandria Ripley.

Everyone would have had a different way of imagining how to extend the popular story, and so the heirs appointed someone of choice, and while the first few pages disappoint in style and substance - Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett was fire and spirit, she might lose but did not take humiliations like a woman is expected to, meekly - the later parts do very well in both ways.

The original told about the civil war and reconstruction in Georgia, both rural and Atlanta, where this sequel takes off and goes into neighbouring states where Scarlett has relatives, and her experience of the reconstruction years there and her spirited dealings with people. Then it shifts to her ancestral Ireland and to Tara, which her childhood home was named after, and deals with history happening there, with Scarlett playing multiple roles.

If you wish to know about her love life, read this for yourself.