Donald McCaig, "who enjoyed success with historical novels, books about Border collies and two authorized follow-ups to Gone With the Wind," died November 11, the New York Times reported. He was 78. McCaig was "well known to listeners of the NPR program All Things Considered for his homespun dispatches about life on his 280-acre farm in the Allegheny Mountains, where he and his wife raised sheep."
The Border collies they used to work the flock inspired several of his fiction and nonfiction books, including Nop's Trials (1984), Nop's Hope (1994) and Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men (1991). In 2007, McCaig published the bestseller Rhett Butler's People, an alternate view of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, and later wrote another GWTW novel, Ruth's Journey (2014). His other works include the novel Jacob's Ladder (1998) and the essay collection, An American Homeplace (1992).
In Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men, McCaig wrote: "Since dogs could hear and smell better than men, we could concentrate on sight. Since courage is commonplace in dogs, men's adrenal glands could shrink. Dogs, by making us more efficient predators, gave us time to think. In short, dogs civilized us."