A second book featuring the characters from Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” influential in the way it dealt with issues of racism and inequality, is set to publish July 14.
Harper Lee’s long-lost manuscript “Go Set a Watchman” is set 20 years after the events of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and features the main character, Jean Louise Finch, known as Scout, as an adult, according to a press release by the publisher, Harper.
“Go Set a Watchman” was written first, but an editor at publisher J.B. Lipincott persuaded Lee to write about the main character’s childhood, resulting in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” according to a press release.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” dealt with inequality, injustice and race relations, set in Alabama in the 1930s through the eyes of a young white girl whose attorney father defends a black man accused of rape. The book won a Pulitzer Prize, but was Lee’s only published novel.
The publisher Harper describes the new book’s plot:
Go Set a Watchman is set during the mid-1950s and features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father, Atticus. 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.
Lee’s and attorney Tonja Carter discovered the manuscript, which had been considered lost, the publisher stated in the release.
“I hadn’t realized it 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,” Lee said in the prepared statement. “I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.”
While the publisher does not call it a sequel, the book revisits the same themes and characters.
“Reading in many ways like a sequel to Harper Lee’s classic novel, it is a compelling and ultimately moving narrative about a father and a daughter’s relationship, and the life of a small Alabama town living through the racial tensions of the 1950s,” said Jonathan Burnham, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Harper, in a prepared statement.
