Rhett gets a back story - Donald McCaig was asked to write the new 'Gone With the Wind' sequel. His approach is unconventional.

HIGHLAND COUNTY, Va. -- Donald McCaig has to make sure that the fences are mended so his sheep don't stray, that his border collies are tucked away in a kennel, that his Pyrenees guard dogs are being looked after and that the leftover venison from supper has been disposed of before he leaves his beloved farm for a 30-day tour to promote "Rhett Butler's People," the new sort-of-a-sequel to "Gone With the Wind."

Oh, and there's one more chore: The driver's side window in his 1989 Mercury station wagon -- his good car -- is broken. "If I can't get it fixed in Staunton," says McCaig, 67, "I'll just cover it with plastic and duct tape and that will be that."

Then McCaig will travel to Washington D.C., Atlanta, New York and other cities to speak to readers and sign copies of his book, which took six years to write.

There already has been one official sequel to Margaret Mitchell's phenomenal 1936 novel. Alexandra Ripley's "Scarlett," sanctioned by Mitchell's estate in Atlanta, was published in 1991. And an unofficial version: Alice Randall's "The Wind Done Gone" came out in 2001. Both books sold well but received harsh criticism.

The original novel, a colossal saga set in the Civil War-torn South, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 and was made into the spectacular, all-time classic movie two years later. The book continues to sell well, so Mitchell's estate agreed to let St. Martin's Press -- which paid $4.5 million for the right to publish a sequel -- take another swipe at it.

For a while, it looked like Pat Conroy, who wrote a loving intro to an anniversary edition of Mitchell's novel, was going to try his hand. But when that didn't happen, St. Martin's approached McCaig. He has written the historical novels "Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War" and "Canaan: A Novel of the Reunited States After the War." The Virginia Quarterly Review called "Jacob's Ladder" the best Civil War novel ever written.

He has also written several books about sheepdogs, including the novels "Nop's Trials" and "Nop's Hope." McCaig says he's been able to "eke out a living" from the sales of all these volumes.

You know when you approach McCaig that you're in the company of a real character. He's got an earthy sense of humor and a laugh that sounds like a vintage tractor on a cold morning. He's a barrel-chested man with a bushy white mustache and cumulus-cloud eyebrows. On this evening, he is wearing a yellow shirt, blue jeans, a white cowboy hat and green suspenders. A reddish dog whistle dangles around his neck. He looks like a color wheel.