I have never bothered Harper Lee, although I have had endless chances. Many times, I’ve looked across the broom sage behind my parents’ Alabama home toward the town where she lives, and I have wondered: What is she up to? Why has one of America’s most cherished authors fallen so silent for so long?
So the latest news landed like a thunderclap in my Twitter feed: She has a new book.
Readers have waited for those words almost my entire life. Lee’s first novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” came out in 1960 as the nation was rising into the Civil Rights era. Her story of a young girl named Scout, her wise father, Atticus, and the racially charged events in fictitious Maycomb, Alabama, resonated widely. A hit movie followed, and over the decades, 30 million copies of the book sold worldwide.
The new book will continue the story of Scout “some 20 years later” according to a release from the HarperCollins. Oddly, this sequel was written before “To Kill a Mockingbird.” A quote from Lee on the publisher’s website says, “In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called ‘Go Set a Watchman.’ It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman, and I thought it a pretty decent effort.
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I knew she wanted to be left alone, and the Southern manners with which I’d been raised — the same she grew up with — kept me away. And unless she suddenly announces a return to public life with this new novel, out of respect I will continue to keep my distance.
And I suspect I will read this new novel at arm’s length, too. Not merely because my own vision has faded a bit through all the waiting, but also because she has surely grown larger in my imagination than any human can actually be. Her talent has been magnified in the public eye by years of unbroken focus on a single, spectacular piece of writing. Follow-ups to greatness so rarely work out as we hope.
So, like Boo Radley, I am eager to peek into Scout’s world again, but I will do so from behind a half-pulled curtain, timidly, for fear of what I might see — and for fear of scaring the mockingbird off once more.
