NEW YORK — Pulitzer Prize-winning Alabamian Harper Lee is perhaps the state’s best-known author for her 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but for the past 50 years Ms. Lee has been remarkably silent about a second book—until now.
According to a release from her publisher, Lee’s new novel, titled “Go Set a Watchman,” is actually the original story of “Mockingbird’s” Scout.
“In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called ‘Go Set a Watchman,’” Lee said in the statement. “It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman, and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel (what became ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’) from the point of view of the young Scout.
“I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn’t realized [Go Set a Watchman] had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought and hesitation, I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.”
Harper Publishing is planning a first print of 2 million copies.
The new novel is reportedly still set in the fictional Maycomb, Alabama, 20 years after “To Kill a Mockingbird” takes place.
“Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father, Atticus,” Harper Publisher’s statement says. “She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood.”
“Go Set a Watchman” will be released July 14th in both print and ebook. The infamously media-shy Harper Lee is not expected to do any kind of promotion for the book.
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— Elizabeth BeShears (@LizEBeesh) January 21, 2015
