Description
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 several hundred thousand a year. 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 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: A Portrait of Harper Lee 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.
"Harper Lee caught the beauty of America with To Kill a Mockingbird, but has remained something of a mystery ever since. Charles J. Shields's portrait of her, Mockingbird, shows us a quietly reclusive, down-to-earth woman with an enormous gift and documents her struggle to live with that gift for the rest of her life. Shields's evocation of both the woman and her beautiful, sleepy, and smoldering South are pitch-perfect."
"Harper Lee's intense personal privacy sets daunting limitations for a biographer, but Charles J. Shields has ingeniously recovered the feel of her childhood world of Monroeville, Alabama, and the small-town Southern customs and vivid personalities that shaped her prickly independence."
"An informative and genial biography that literary fiction lovers will flock to."
-Anne Rivers Siddons
"Harper Lee's intense personal privacy sets daunting limitations for a biographer, but Charles J. Shields has ingeniously recovered the feel of her childhood world of Monroeville, Alabama, and the small-town Southern customs and vivid personalities that shaped her prickly independence."
Louise Westling,
author of
Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens
author of
Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens
"An informative and genial biography that literary fiction lovers will flock to."
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