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The colorful life of the remarkable
woman who created To Kill a Mockingbird—the classic
that became a touchstone for generations of Americans
To Kill a Mockingbird, the twentieth-century’s
most widely read American novel, has sold thirty million copies
and still sells a million yearly. Yet despite the book’s perennial
popularity, its creator, Harper Lee has become a somewhat
mysterious figure. Now, after years of research, Charles J.
Shields has brought to life the warmhearted, high-spirited,
and occasionally hardheaded woman who gave us two of American
literature’s most unforgettable characters—Atticus Finch
and his daughter, Scout—and who contributed to the success
of her lifelong friend Truman Capote’s masterpiece, In
Cold Blood.
At the center of Shields’s lively book
is the story of Lee’s struggle to create her famous novel.
But her life contains many other highlights as well: her girlhood
as a tomboy in overalls in tiny Monroeville, Alabama; the
murder trial that made her beloved father’s reputation and
inspired her great work; her journey to Kansas as Capote’s
ally and research assistant to help report the story of the
Clutter murders; the surrogate family she found in New York
City.
Drawing on six hundred interviews and much
new information, Mockingbird is the first book ever
written about Harper Lee. Highly entertaining, filled with
humor and heart, this is an evocative portrait of a writer,
her dream, and the place and people whom she made immortal.
A former English teacher who taught Harper
Lee’s novel for years, Charles J. Shields has a BA
in English and an MA in American history from the University
of Illinois, where he was a James Scholar. The author of many
widely praised books for young people, he spent four years
researching Mockingbird in Alabama, New York, and Kansas,
speaking to hundreds of Lee’s neighbors, friends, classmates,
and culling facts from the archives of Truman Capote and other
collections, as well as papers from the Monroe County (Alabama)
courthouse and historical museum. He lives in central Virginia
with his wife.
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