What do readers think of Ruth's Journey by Donald McCaig? Write your own review.

I was so excited to receive this book as one of my favorite books was Gone with the Wind. I was so confused when the book started out in France and then to Haiti. Mammie is not even the main character in the book. I found his style of writing difficult to read and I found myself scanning this book looking for something that I could connect with. This book was such a disappointment.

Gone with the Wind was the first adult book that I read when I was young and it remains one of the few books that I re- read every few years. I was excited to find out about this book and the potential opportunity to learn more about Mammy, one of the key characters in GWTW. Wow was I disappointed. I thought that this book was poorly written and the characters were very one dimensional. I don't know much more about Mammy now than I did before except that her real name was Ruth. I truly think that authors should quit trying to add on to earlier novels - they should just leave those characters alone. Major disappointment!

A totally unnecessary journey, if you ask me. I learned a few things about the Haitian revolution Ruth, who became Scarlett's Mammy, was born there when it was still St-Domingue, but the book didn't add much to the story of GWTW.
The first two-thirds of the book are told in the third person the last third is in Ruth's own voice and patois and reveal Ruth's origins and her "adoption" by Solange Fournier, who became Scarlett's grandmother. Unlike GWTW, Ruth's Journey moves rapidly and skims over the major historical events of the novel, as if the author were in a rush to get to the "good stuff': "introducing" the reader to Scarlett and the O'Hara clan.
I didn't read McCaig's "authorized sequel," Rhett Butler's People, but I did read Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley, which was yet another unnecessary sewuel to GWTW. If you need a Scarlett fix, just re-read GWTW and don't bother with this waste of paper.

I haven't been this disappointed in a book in a long time. This book is long, drawn out and boring, boring, boring. I could have written a better book myself. Whoever decided this was good, must have not read the book.