Fan Favorite: Great American Authors | Harper Lee: Mockingbird | 6

Imagine it's the spring of 1957, you're an editor at a distinguished literary publishing

house in New York and one of the few senior women in the office.

You walk into a towering, art deco building in the heart, Midtown Manhattan, your shoulder

strains under a heavy bag, you're carrying a 250 page manuscript and it's a story that

you can't get off your mind.

After two decades in the business, you've established yourself as a trusted leader with

a strong instinct for story and a talent for working with young writers.

As you enter the office, you're greeted by a more junior employee named Margarit.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I was hoping I would run into you.

I want to talk over that manuscript you passed over, the one by that young author from

Alabama.

Right, go set a watchman.

I didn't think it was worth your time to read.

You're surprised.

Margarit has been working and publishing a few years and you've come to rely on her to

vet new writers before they get to your desk.

But when you saw this manuscript in the rejection pile, something made you decide to give

it a look.

You decide to press her on her reasoning.

Well, what made you think that?

Well, for starters, it's far too long for a first novel.

I agree.

It's a bit long, but that's what good editors are for.

Cutting.

Honing.

A focus.

All right, but the story was simply too autobiographical.

And there's nothing tying all the various narrative arcs together.

There's plenty to change about the book.

We can agree on that.

Right now it reads more like a collection of anecdotes than a cohesive novel.

But weren't you struck by the author's distinctive voice?

It's hard to believe this 30-year-old writer hasn't published anything before.

Not even a short story.

I marveled at the prose and the nuanced depictions of setting.

Margarit looks at you sheepishly.

I suppose I had noticed all that.

And what about the characters?

Don't you think there's a reason you felt it was autobiographical?

The characters were so three-dimensional, so real.

It's as if you and I could be standing in a room with them right now.

Now Margarit looks embarrassed.

You aren't intending to scold her.

You just want her to learn from the experience so you soften your tone.

This manuscript is a perfect candidate for a publishing house like ours.

With our help, I think the book could really become something.

Let's get this writer to come in for meaning.

All right.

I see what you're saying.

I'll call her agent now.

You leave Margarit and settle in at your desk,

feeling a sense of relief that you didn't let her pass this manuscript over.

You can't wait to meet this mysterious writer from Alabama.

She may be the rare talent you've been looking for.

Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.

From Wondery, I'm Lindsay Graham,

and this is American History Tellers, Our History, Your Story.

In the spring of 1957, an aspiring writer named Nell Harper Lee

submitted a manuscript entitled Go Set a Watchman to several New York publishers.

Editor Tay Hohoff saw the promise hiding within Lee's work.

Over the next several months with Hohoff's guidance,

Lee would reshape her manuscript into a breakout novel to Kill a Mockingbird.

This book was an instant success and soon ignited a country-wide debate about racial injustice

while giving many northerners a window into small town's southern life.

A New York Times reviewer said of Lee,

here is a storyteller justifying the novel as a form that transcends time and place.

At that moment, Lee appeared to be a trailblazing new author at the start of a prolific career.

But in the years to come, Lee would not publish another book.

Soon after Mockingbird, Lee all but disappeared from public life.

She stopped doing interviews and even shied away from lifelong friends.

Decades later, when an old manuscript of her suddenly appeared,

no one knew what to believe, and a battle over her classic book and her legacy began.

This is the story of Harper Lee, who wrote a narrative that gripped a nation

only to lose control of her own.

This is the final episode in our six-part series, Great American Authors, Mockingbird.

Now Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama in April 1926, the youngest of four children.

Unlike her older sisters, Alice and Louise, now quickly developed a reputation for rebellious

behavior. She was known to horse around with boys on the playground, climb tall trees,

and call her schoolteachers by their first names. In 1930, the town of Monroeville had just over

1,300 residents, an old hotel, and no library. The streets were unpaved, and the only places

with plumbing were the jail and the courthouse. It was the era of the Great Depression,

and Lee later recalled, we didn't have much money, we didn't have many toys to play with,

so the result was we lived in our imaginations most of the time.

Lee's mother Francis never quite understood her youngest daughter.

She had been raised in a Gentile Southern home studying Latin and playing the piano at a girl's

finishing school, not getting her pants dirty and tackle football. And during Nell's childhood,

her mother began to suffer from what her family called a nervous disorder. Her drastic mood swings

brought with them erratic behavior. Her mental illness kept her largely housebound and meant that

Nell and her siblings came to primarily rely on their father, a mosa Coleman, or AC Lee for stability.

AC Lee was already in his 50s by the time Nell entered the first grade. A lawyer and part owner of

a local newspaper, he was often stoic and introspective in public, but at home Nell and her siblings

found him to be a loving father who encouraged their curiosity, and it was AC who gave Nell her first

typewriter. Nell shared her prized typewriter with her next-door neighbor, a boy named Truman's

Streckfast Persons, who would later go by the name Truman Capote. Capote's mother moved him to

Monroeville in the summer of 1930 to live with relatives when he was six years old and Lee was five.

Even after his mother returned to take him to New York a few years later, he'd spend every summer

back in Alabama. So Lee and Capote became close friends, and could often be found playing jacks

or reading Sherlock Holmes books in the tree house between their family's homes. They also spent

many an afternoon huddled around Lee's typewriter, writing stories with a webster's dictionary in hand.

And they would often hang around the local courthouse, too, where they'd sit in the second floor

gallery and watch Lee's father AC argue cases below. AC's southern heritage shaped his views.

His father had been a Confederate soldier and was distantly related to General Robert E. Lee,

the commander of the Confederate Army. AC opposed federal anti-linging laws and condone segregation

until later in life. But AC Lee was vehemently opposed to the way justice was often carried out in

places like Monroeville, at the hands of vigilante mobs or terror groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

As a lawyer, AC Lee believed in the power of the law to bring justice. A few years before his

daughter Nell was born, he tried his first criminal case, defending two black men accused of murdering

a white shop owner. But the deck was stacked against the men before the trial even began.

Lee had only two weeks to prepare his defense, and one of the victim's sons was allowed to serve

on the jury. It accused men were sentenced to death, and Lee never argued another criminal case.

But AC Lee didn't courage his daughter Nell to pursue a career in law and following his footsteps

as her older sister Alice had, and for a while it seemed Nell might. After a year at a woman's

college in 1945, Nell transferred to the University of Alabama's law program. There she stood out

from her sorority sisters as a short-haired, cigarette-smoking introvert who'd rather play golf

by herself than socialize. She wrote for both a student newspaper and humor magazine, and by the time

she was a senior, Lee had begun to think it was writing that she'd like to pursue and not the law.

Then, just one semester short of her degree, Lee dropped out of college, much to her father's

dismay. She saved up some money by waitressing at the Monroeville golf club, then packed up her bags

and moved North to try and make it as a writer, just like her childhood friend Truman Capote.

Truman had skipped college and jumpstarted his career writing for the New Yorker magazine.

By the summer of 1949, his first novel had already shot to the top of the New York Times best

cellar list. Basking in his success, he decided to spend that summer in Morocco, so he wasn't in

New York in August of 1949 to welcome Lee when she arrived. So if Lee had dreamed of a seamless

Monroeville to Manhattan story like Capote's, she was in for a rude awakening. She couldn't get

work as a full-time writer, so she took a job in a bookstore, then another as an airline

reservation agent. It was barely enough to get by and she soon found herself scavenging for loose

change, checking parking meters for discarded coins. She lived off peanut butter sandwiches in a

third floor walk-up apartment without a stove or hot water. Lee spent much of her precious free time

trying to write at a makeshift desk, which she constructed herself from an old door and some

crates, but she didn't make much progress. She would later recall, contrary to what most people

think there's no glamour to writing. In fact, it's heartbreak most of the time. All this made Lee's

New York experience stand in sharp contrast to Capote's with his successful writing career

and circle of creative artist friends. One of those fellow artists was a Broadway musical composer

named Michael Brown, another Southern transplant. When Lee first arrived in New York,

Capote had asked Brown to show her around and help her settle in. The two of them became fast

friends. Lee began to share her writing with Brown and his wife Joy, and she soon became a

regular at their townhouse on East 50th Street, bringing along the latest stories she'd been working

on to read aloud to them. The couple was always impressed with what they heard. So in November of

1956, Michael Brown set Lee up with a literary agent he knew. After reading a batch of Lee's short

stories, the agent told her she had real talent, but short stories were tough to sell. Instead,

the agent advised her to try writing a novel, but with Lee's busy airline job, she was hard-pressed

to find the time. The next month, the Browns insisted that Lee stay at their house so she wouldn't

be alone during the holidays, and at Christmas, they would present her with a gift that would change

Lee's life forever. Imagine as Christmas morning in 1956. Snow was coating the ground outside your

19th century townhouse in New York. You're a father of two eager toddlers who've been nagging you

for days to let them open the carefully wrapped presents under the tree in your living room.

You wake up and groggly head downstairs to light a fire in the fireplace. One of your kids

races past you up the stairs to awaken your sleeping house guests, your good friend Nell Lee.

A few minutes later, Nell comes down the stairs. Very Christmas, Nell.

Did you get some sleep? Yes, I was comfortable as always. The townhouse feels like home.

You give the children a nod and they begin to frantically unwrap their presents.

Nell leans back on the sofa enjoying the chaos. Then she points to two gifts tucked under the tree.

Don't let the kids have all the fun. Why don't you see what treasures I scrounged up for you too?

Nell smiles as you and your wife open your gifts, a portrait of a humorous for you and a collection

of writing for your wife. But as the last gifts are opened, you notice a hint of disappointment

spread across Nell's face. You smile and point to the tree. We haven't forgotten you. Look,

Nell finds an envelope tucked into the pine vows. She looks confused as she reads what you've written

inside. What does this mean? Just what it says. You have one year off from your job to write whatever

you please. I don't understand. Is this a joke? Far from it. We've had a good year.

You know the whims of Broadway, it seems the crowds have appreciated my songs more than usual.

We've been putting some of that money aside and we think it's time we do something about you.

What do you mean do something about me? You're talented, Nell. And we believe in you.

We just want to give you a shot to practice your craft, free from the burdens of everyday working life.

Are you crazy? You don't have a year's salaries that throw away. Who knows what could happen in that time?

What if the children get sick? We'll be fine. But consider it alone if you like. Just say you'll take it.

Okay. I will. I don't know how to thank you. You're taking such a huge risk on me.

Nonsense. It's not a risk. It's a sure thing.

You look at Nell and know you've made the right choice. She already has a new glow,

like your gift lit a match inside her. You can't wait to see what the next year will bring.

After the Browns generous gift in December 1956, Lee promised herself,

I would do my best not to fail them. She promptly quit her job at the airline and hold up in

her apartment, telling a friend she wouldn't be leaving the house for the entire year.

Lee called writing the hardest thing in the world for me. Sometimes she spends six to 12 hours

churning out just one page. Her focus on revisions made her a slow worker. In fact,

she called herself more of a re-writer than a writer. But with nothing to distract her,

Lee was able to quicken the pace of her work. She'd spent seven years in New York with little to

show for them. But in just two months, by the end of February 1957, she drafted a novel.

The 250-page manuscript she turned into her agent described a young woman named Jean Louise,

who returned to Alabama after spending some time living in New York. Her father, Atticus,

was a lawyer, just like Lee's. And the story was centered on issues of race and racism in a small

southern town, which bore a distinct resemblance to her hometown of Monroeville. After reading it,

Lee's agent sent along that manuscript to a respected publishing house called JB Lippincott,

where it landed on the desk of Tay Hohoff, one of the company's few senior woman editors.

Hohoff saw potential in the draft, and in the summer of 1957, she brought Lee in for a meeting.

Hohoff told Lee that the draft needed work, but it had promised. Lee spent another few months

revising on her own, and by October, the editors at JB Lippincott were sold. They signed a deal with

Lee and gave her a few thousand dollars advance to get the manuscript into publishing shape.

Hohoff and Lee then spent the next six months working through revisions together.

It was a slow and painstaking process. Later, Lee recalled getting so frustrated one night

that she threw the pages she'd been working on out the window. But after Hohoff scolded her over

the phone, Lee ran out into the cold and collected the discarded pages from the dirty New York snow.

In their revision process, Lee and Hohoff decided the story needed a new perspective.

They framed their revised draft through Jean Louise's eyes and set it in the Great Depression

when she was still a child who went by the nickname Scout. To populate Scout's hometown,

Lee pulled from character she herself had known during her childhood. There was the mysterious

neighbor down the street, Boo Radley, whom the kids tried to coax out of his home,

a loving black housekeeper, Calperna, who cared for Scout and her brother.

A rambunctious best friend named Dill who spent his summers in the house next door.

And at the heart of the story was a trial, which Lee said was a composite of all the trials in the

world but set at Monroeville's courthouse. In the story Scout's father, Atticus Finch,

defends a black man named Tom Robinson who'd been falsely accused of raping a white woman.

Despite the prejudice of many of his white neighbors, Atticus told his children,

the one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

And when the jury chose to convict Robinson of the crime, the children learn a stark lesson

about racial injustice. In their father's words, in our courts, when it's a white man's word

against a black man's, the white man always wins. As the manuscript continued to evolve,

Lee retitled it Atticus, but by its third draft, she was calling it To Kill a Mockingbird.

By the spring of 1959, Ho Ha thought Mockingbird was ready to be published.

As Lee waited to receive galleys of the book, she got a call from her friend Truman Capote.

Capote's editor at the New Yorker had given him a new assignment to go to Kansas and write about

a wheat farmer, his wife, and two kids who had all been brutally murdered. Capote told Lee he needed

a research assistant and Lee enthusiastically signed up. Capote said the trip would take just

a few days, but their visit to this small town in Kansas to investigate a murder would change

both of the writer's lives and their relationship forever.

Imagine it's late December of 1959. You're at home in your small farming community of

Holcomb, Kansas, and tonight you and your husband are hosting two new guests who recently arrived

in town, all the way from New York City. Right away, they struck you as an odd pair.

The man instantly dominates the conversation, speaking in long monologues and rattling on about

his famous friends, but the woman is more reserved, polite, with an underlying warm.

When she offers to help you in the kitchen, you're glad to have an excuse to step away from the others.

Smells great in here. How can I help? Why don't you put some condiments in those bowls over there?

I'll check on the potatoes. It's a wonder how many ways you can cook a potato,

and all of them are delicious. Back home, we always love baked potato soup.

Really? Potato soup doesn't strike me as a New York special. Oh, I'm not from New York,

just a recent transplant. I spent my life in Alabama, a little town called Monroeville.

A southern girl. That's right. I find my mind is never far from there.

It's all I can seem to write about, and I still go back from time to time. How about you?

Have you always lived in Oklahoma? I was born in Selden and went to school in Kansas City.

Spent a year in Topeka when Cliff was in law school, but I've always lived in Kansas.

And you're a local reporter, is that right? You're surprised. You know she and her friend are in

town to dig into a legal case. They must know that your husband is the victim's lawyer,

but just now when you mentioned his law practice, she didn't take it as a chance to dig. Instead,

she seems genuinely interested in you. Yes, I write a daily column for the telegram.

I took a few years off after having my first three kids, but it's great to be back on the job.

You said you're a writer too? Well, I'm trying to be. I finally pulled enough together for a book,

but it's been excruciating. I don't know how you're able to write every day. Doesn't your brain ever

draw blank? You laugh opening the oven to check on the dock roasting.

I'm lucky to have an editor who lets me write whatever I please.

Some days I moan about the trials of raising a family. In others, I've become an amateur comic.

It sounds fun. Say, I hope you don't mind me saying so, but I think that bird needs a little

longer in the oven. You smile. It's nice to have another woman around to lessen the load,

and a working woman no less a fellow writer. By the time you return to the table to rejoin the

group, you can't believe the two of you just met, because it feels like you've known her forever.

When Truman Capote arrived in Kansas, he couldn't have looked more out of place, dressed in a

sheepskin coat, long scarf, and moccasins. Lee later recalled,

those people had never seen anyone like Truman. He was like someone coming off the moon. His ego and

his penchant for name-dropping rubbed people the wrong way. Lee, on the other hand, was approachable.

She quickly began earning the trust of wives around town, like Dolores Hope, whose husband was the

lawyer for the victim's family, and Marie Dewey, who was married to the detective appointed to the

case, Agent Alvin Dewey. Soon Agent Dewey warned to lead, too. He recalled,

she had a down-home style, a friendly smile, and a knack for saying the right things. If Capote

came on as something of a shocker, she was there to absorb the shock. Lee was also careful and

diligent in her reporting, and her work became crucial as Capotey decided to turn his New Yorker

article into a full-length book. She organized her observations into categories and drew timelines

and diagrams to piece the story together. To help Capotey recall a particular interview,

she often wrote a little scene describing its setting. And she learned as many personal details

about the family that had been killed as she could, even befriending local church ladies,

who gossiped with her. The detail she gleaned, which she shared with Capotey,

eventually helped him paint a rich portrait of each character in the book he would call

in cold blood. Back in New York, in March of 1960,

Mockingbird was almost ready to hit shelves when Lee learned that Reader's Digest and the

Literary Guild had selected it as the book of the month to offer their subscribers.

This meant it would instantly be promoted to thousands of people. Lee was so overjoyed at

the Literary Guild's rave review that she got a J-walking ticket, racing downtown to her

agent's office to celebrate. Then in July of 1960, Mockingbird was finally published

and quickly hit the New York Times and Chicago Tribune top 10 bestseller lists.

The New York Times review called Lee a fresh writer with something significant to say.

Then within just six months of Mockingbird's publication, Lee had signed a deal with a Hollywood

production company to turn it into a movie. And then after 41 weeks on the bestseller list,

it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction writing. Lee was thrilled, but she wrote to a friend,

the Pulitzer is one thing. The approval of my own people is the only literary reward I covet.

As soon as she got word of the award, she phoned her sister Alice, hoping to take the pulse of

reactions in Monroeville. But she didn't have worried. The county paper summed out the positive

reaction. What happens in a small southern town when citizens learn that one of its natives has

just become a Pulitzer Prize winner? Well, the word travels fast. Telephone's ring,

bulletins go on the radio, people jump in their automobiles and travel to the next block to tell

their neighbors. There was no question when Roville and people who love Lee are proud of her and

her work. Requests for interviews and letters from fans poured into Lee's mailbox. Truman

Capote wrote to friends, poor thing, she says she gave up trying to answer her fan mail when she

received 62 letters in one day. But though Capote thrived in the spotlight, Lee felt overwhelmed

by the sudden rush of attention. She didn't like talking to the press and kept her responses

curt. To field requests and manage her business affairs, Lee increasingly turned to her sister Alice.

Alice Lee was 15 years older than now, and as a trained lawyer, she became her sister's defacto

advisor and manager. It was Alice, who at the end of 1963, crunched the numbers on her sister's

finances to find that much of Lee's earnings would have to go toward tax payments. Both sisters

were shocked. Suddenly Lee felt she was suffering from the consequences of success, the fame,

the publicity demands, the taxes, but not enjoying the fruits of it. She told the Associated Press,

success has had a very bad effect on me. I'm running justice scared as before.

What's more, while Mockingbird was widely praised, its message of racial injustice sparked

controversy. At the time of publication, the country was embroiled in the largest civil rights

movement in U.S. history. That year, 1960, had seen the famous lunch counter sit-in in Greensboro

North Carolina and the forced integration of New Orleans elementary schools. And to kill a Mockingbird,

explored race relations in the American South head-on. Lee painted a harsh picture of racial

injustice and the novel seemed to instruct white southerners to reject racist views.

But the book's message had its enemies. Just days after Mockingbird was awarded paperback

of the year in 1962, Alabama Governor George Wallace took to the state capital steps and declared

segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

By 1964, two years after the publication of Mockingbird, Lee had only written a few more short

articles. But she assured a reporter that she was still hard at work on her next novel.

She told him, I would like to be the chronicler of something I think is going down the drain

very swiftly. And that is small town, middle-class southern life. In fact, Lee said she hoped to

become the Jane Austen of South Alabama. But Lee was struggling under the weight of the public's

expectations. All anyone wanted to know was when her next novel would come out and what it would

be about. Lee felt pressure to write something that could live up to the success of Mockingbird,

telling her cousin, I haven't anywhere to go but down. In the meantime, Mockingbird continued to

spark debates about race. In 1966, a school board in Richmond, Virginia voted to ban the book

from the curriculum, calling it immoral. Instantly, community members filled the op-ed pages of the

local newspaper to debate the ban. One librarian was supportive, declaring it's gratifying to know

that the Hanover County school board has taken a firm stand against slummy books. But another reader

countered to ban a book is to plant the seeds of narrow-mindedness. Eventually, the school board

backtracked, and the book was allowed back onto the shelves. But it was hardly the last time Lee

would encounter resistance to her book's message of racial justice.

In January 1966, as Nell Lee struggled to handle her success, Truman Capote finally published his

book In Cold Blood. It was hailed as a major journalistic feat, the first ever nonfiction novel.

The New York Times praised the immense courage it must have taken to follow the story through

and write it down, and called the book Reportage and Adept We Have Not Seen Before.

But when Nell Lee opened her copy of the book, she was shocked by what she found. The only credit

for her contributions was in the form of a dedication written to both her and Capote's romantic

partner. Lee and Capote's friendship had been strained for some time. Capote's cousin

attested that Capote was envious of Lee's Pulitzer win, and even resented her for it. He'd also been

increasingly using drugs and alcohol to numb the stress that came with his work. When Capote

hosted a black and white mass ball at the plaza hotel that autumn, he chose to invite over 500

friends, but his oldest Nell Lee would not attend. By 1977, over a decade after the In Cold Blood

Snub, Harper Lee had still not given up her dream of writing another novel, and one day she opened

up the newspaper and saw a story that jumped off the page. It was a strange case involving a

series of murders, about a hundred miles from Inrovil, in Alexander City, Alabama. She saw an

opportunity to write her own version of In Cold Blood. So like she had for Capote a decade before,

she packed up her life and went to live in Alexander City, committed to writing a true crime novel

of her own. Lee was now in her fifties, but her mind for reporting was as sharp as it had been

nearly two decades before in Kansas. She collected a paper trail of records and traveled from

county to county, interviewing anyone with a stake in the story. She even came up with a title for

her new book, The Revrent. But when she returned to New York and sat down to write, nothing came.

She struggled to structure the story and mulled over the ethical questions of covering true crime.

She suffered under the pressure of what she called her neck being breathed on to turn out as

high quality a book as Mockingbird. Rumors swirled about her progress, but years passed with no

publication and no public statement from Lee. By Mockingbird's 30th anniversary in 1990,

a newspaper reporter wrote that Lee had vanished from the literary landscape,

becoming nearly as enigmatic as Boo Radley, her novels for bidding recluse.

Lee was fading away, and not just from public view. One of her key sources for The Revrent said

it was his impression that Lee was fighting a battle between the book and a bottle of Scotch,

and the Scotch was winning. Her sister Alice, too, had expressed concern about Nell's drinking

habits throughout her life. Lee's personal circle was also shrinking. Her father and brother had

died decades before. By the early 1980s, her editor, Tay Hohoff, had also passed away. In 1984,

Capote died, too. Despite their disagreements over incol blood, it was another blow for Lee,

who's still considered Capote a close friend. Meanwhile, Lee's masterpiece Mockingbird continued

to soar to New Heights. It was voted best novel of the century by a library journal poll in 1998,

and it had become a classic of American literature, with the years of trying to replicate her success

and come with a heavy cost.

In June of 2007, Harper Lee failed to show up for a lunch date with some friends in New York.

Later, they found her lying on the floor in her apartment, having suffered a severe stroke.

Lee recovered, but the stroke left her in a wheelchair, and struggling with her vision and hearing.

Lee and her sister Alice decided to move back to Monroeville for good.

Lee had been splitting her time between New York and Alabama for years.

Even at the height of Mockingbird's press tour, she'd been shuffling back and forth to visit

her father as his health declined. Local residents might see her shopping at the dollar general,

feeding ducks by the pond, or sipping sweet tea at David's catfish house with her sister.

Though Lee was known to reject interview requests with an emphatic hell-know,

she was friendly to her neighbors.

But in Monroeville, as elsewhere, she wanted little to do with Mockingbird's fame.

She used to sign copies of the book for local bookstores to sell,

until she realized customers were turning around and reselling them at a huge markup.

But Lee and her sister Alice had grown close to one Chicago Tribune reporter named Maria Mills.

They even helped her rent a house near theirs and granted her permission to write a book about

their lives. Around this time, Alice Lee had also been training a young lawyer,

Tanya B. Carter, to join her practice. Carter was married to Truman Capote's cousin,

and had grown close to the family since the sisters moved back to Alabama.

But soon, Carter's increasing influence began to draw attention.

Imagine it's the fall of 2013. You're a nurse working at an assisted living residence in

Monroeville. You're finishing up your typical morning rounds, changing bedding,

delivering food to residents. You stop off in the staff room for a cup of coffee,

when another one of the nurses approaches you with a hush tone.

Have you heard what's going on with Miss Lee? Nelly? Hmm, what do you mean?

I've been working her rotation for years now, but recently things have been changing.

How so? Well, you know Miss Lee gets so bored here she always loves having visitors.

That kind old man who owns Ratley's found grill used to swing by here every Thursday to see her.

Oh yeah! Didn't he always bring Miss Lee her favorite potato soup?

That's right. Well the other day, I heard him in a spat with someone at the front desk.

They were telling him he couldn't visit. Oh, really? What happened?

Apparently Miss Lee's now got a list of pre-approved visitors. No one else is allowed in.

You're shocked. You put down your coffee cup. Do you know where the list came from?

Apparently her lawyer. That woman she's spent so much time with, Miss Carter?

They're awfully close. I can't imagine Miss Carter would write a list without Miss Lee's permission.

I know. People say she's like family to Miss Lee and assist Alice.

You lower your voice. That reminds me. I overheard some folks at the courthouse cafe gossip in the

other day. Apparently Miss Lee started suing people all around town. Like the local museum.

They've been selling mock and bird merch for years. But just recently she took them to court

over it for the first time. Says it's violating her trademark. That's what I heard too. I don't

understand the sudden change. You glance up at the clock. You've got to get on with your rounds before

lunchtime. You put your coffee cup in the sink. I've got to go. But I will say this.

My family's lived here for generations. The leaves have always been friendly. I'm sure hope

that isn't changing. Me too. I'd hate to think Miss Lee has turned her back on the town that

helped make her famous. It just isn't right. You leave the staff room unsure of what to think about

all this. But as a nurse, you're determined to see that Miss Lee continues to get the best

care possible. In the early 2010s, Tonya Carter filed a series of lawsuits on behalf of her

client Harper Lee. There was one against Lee's literary agent. There was another against a local

museum for selling unauthorized mock and bird merchandise. Carter's firm also released a statement

saying that Lee had never given the Chicago Tribune reporter Maria Mills permission to write about

her. But the biggest surprise was yet to come. According to Carter, she'd been sorting through

Lee's papers in her office one day when she'd come across a manuscript she'd never seen before.

It was for a story called Go Set a Watchman. The manuscript was the same one that

editor Tae Ho Ha first read back in the 1950s. Over half a century after Mockingbird was published,

the newly found manuscript was presented to the publishers at Harper Collins.

And in July of 2015, they put it to print, packaging it to the public as a quasi-sequel to Lee's

classic novel. Go Set a Watchman featured some of the same characters readers had grown to love

in Mockingbird, but deviated from Lee's beloved classic in significant ways. Instead of telling

the story through the eyes of Young Scout, it followed an adult version of Scout, Gene Louise,

who was disillusioned with her father Atticus and the South as a whole.

Rather than Mockingbird's Atticus, a triumphant lawyer fighting for racial justice,

Go Set a Watchman featured an old and flawed man, who espoused openly racist views,

attended a clan meeting, and opposed the Supreme Court's ruling on desegregation.

If Mockingbird's lesson had been that all people, regardless of race, were worthy of respect,

Watchman seemed to say that not everyone believed in that ideal of equality.

In the time since Mockingbird's first publication, it had become part of the American literary canon,

but also the subject of increasing criticism. Many modern readers recoiled at its use of racial slurs.

Some argued the book lacked three-dimensional black characters, and that its portrayal of racism

was simplistic and lacking nuance. Others argued that it was a paternalistic narrative

of a great white lawyer trying to save a black man, and that it reduced racism to an individual

level problem rather than a systemic one. With Watchman's publication, these questions roared

to the forefront of literary conversation. As a New York Times reviewer reflected,

one of the emotional throughlines in both Mockingbird and Watchman is a plea for empathy.

The difference is that Mockingbird suggested that we should have compassion for outsiders like

Boo and Tom Robinson, while Watchman asked us to have understanding for a big hit in Atticus.

What's more, some said Lee may not have wanted this unedited draft release to the world.

Her Monroeville neighbor said she hadn't been well since her stroke,

and some questioned whether she had been in sound enough mental condition to sign off on publication.

But others close to Lee said she was happy that the original draft was out in the world,

and that she'd finally published that elusive second book.

One year after Go Set a Watchman's publication, in February of 2016, Nell Harper Lee died in her bed

at her assisted living home in Monroeville. A statement released by her publisher said

she lived her life the way she wanted to, in private, surrounded by books and the people who loved

her. But her death left fans with a perplexing challenge. How to sift through the last 50 years

of Lee's life when she seemed to retreat from the boldness of the book that defined her career?

In many ways Harper Lee was full of contradictions, a loner from Alabama who spent much of her life

in the big city, and a claimed author who hardly ever published, a polite Southern woman who

wasn't afraid to confront racial injustice, a giant of American literature who struggled for years

to find her voice, and then at the height of her success fell silent.

From Wondery this is the sixth episode of Great American Authors for American History Tellers.

In our next series, in 1900 a massive storm began churning through the Gulf of Mexico,

headed toward Galveston, Texas. But officials in Washington dismissed urgent warnings from Cuban

forecasters who insisted it would become a deadly hurricane. So as the prosperous island city

carried on unaware, its leaders were left with a fateful choice, sound the alarm and risk panic,

were trust the official forecasters and hoped the storm would turn.

If you'd like to learn more about Harper Lee, we recommend Mockingbird, a portrait of Harper

Lee by Charles J. Shields, and furious hours, murder, fraud, and the last trial of Harper Lee

by Casey Kepp. American History Tellers has hosted, edited, and produced by me Lindsey Graham

for Airship, audio editing by Christian Paraga, sound assigned by Derek Barrett's,

music by Lindsey Graham, voice acting by Joe Hernandez Kulski and Cap Peoples.

This episode is written by Julia Press, edited by Dorian Morena, produced by Alita Rizanski,

our production coordinator is Desi Boylock, managing producer Matt Gantt,

senior producer Andy Herman, and executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marshall Louis for Wondery.

Follow American History Tellers on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to all episodes of American History Tellers ad-free by joining Audible,

and to find out more about me and my other projects, including my live stage show coming to a

theater near you, go to NotThatLinseyGram.com. That's NotThatLinseyGram.com.