A LIGHT BULB GOES OFF - On the order of getting late smart, I recently realized Letters to Virginia is like Gone With the Wind. Both are the stories of how three families were affected by the Civil War and its aftermath. In GWTW there are the O'Haras, Wilkes' and Hamiltons. In Letters there are the Eaches, Fendalls and Tacketts. Other than the names, the major difference is the latter families are real and the former a figment of Margaret Mitchell's fertile imagination.
Mitchell created a vixen named Scarlett, then imagined over three dozen more characters for her 1000+ page novel but she did not envision a family with brothers on opposite sides of the conflict nor a brother stealing his sister's funds nor the tragic toll of cholera on three families nor one son being disinherited and another becoming an alcoholic. Melanie Hamilton loved her husband, Ashley Wilkes, but he secretly lusted after Scarlett. Jack Tackett lived apart from his wife, due to financial circumstances, but wrote love letters daily to her until four days before he dropped dead in their garden.
There are similarities between the authors, too, but I'll tell you about them later.