[1] The character also appears in the 1991 book Scarlett, a sequel to Gone with the Wind written by Alexandra Ripley, and in Rhett Butler's People (2007) by Donald McCaig.

Little Joe Fontaine is killed in battle, and Tony Fontaine has to flee forever to Texas after killing a Yankee (specifically, Scarlett's family's former slave overseer, Jonas Wilkerson, during Reconstruction; after Wilkerson encouraged a former slave to attempt to rape Tony's sister-in-law).

At one point in the book Wilkes pleads, in vain, with his wife Melanie to move to the North, after he comes back from fighting in the war.

In contrast, Wilkes is often impractical (even Melanie admits this on her deathbed), and would resist doing many things Rhett would do because they aren't "proper" or "gentlemanly".

Wilkes fights in the Civil War, but he does it out of love for his homeland and not a hatred of the Yankees, who he actually hopes will just leave the South in peace.

As a soldier he shows enough leadership to be promoted to the rank of Major, and survives being imprisoned at the Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois (a notorious prisoner-of-war camp) for several months.

The War that changed the South forever has turned his world upside down, with everything he had believed in 'gone with the wind', a phrase composed by the poet Ernest Dowson.