Having taught TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD every year for sixteen years, I had to read this new biography of the reclusive author. The author, Charles J. Shields, who wrote it without Lee's cooperation, cleared up several mistaken impressions for me.

For one thing, I had always thought that Harper Lee was a lawyer and that was one of the reasons she hadn't written anything since TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. She did go to law school, but dropped out with a semester left to go to New York to write full time.

Shields focuses on several questions. Why did Lee not follow up the amazing success of TKAM with another novel? Did Truman Capote really write the book? Why did Nelle Harper Lee never marry?

To answer the first, she had a hundred pages of a second novel before TKAM was published, but several factors intruded on its completion. One was her obligation to promote the novel and later the movie. The second was her collaboration with Truman Capote on IN COLD BLOOD, which also answers the second question. Nelle Harper contributed more to IN COLD BLOOD than Truman Capote did TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Why she never married is inconclusive; Capote said she had a love affair with a law professor during her college years; Shields also hints that there may have been a romantic relationship with her married agent, Maurice Crain, but there's no doubt she was a tomboy and an eccentric well into her college years and never had much interest in men.

Personally, I found the section on IN COLD BLOOD most compelling. The people around Garden City and Holcomb, Kansas, found Truman Capote about as easy to like as an alien from another planet. Nelle made friends and smoothed the way for his interviews. She also took copious notes.

Another interesting element was the apparent biographical content of her novel. Dill was definitely Truman Capote, who lived right next door in Monroeville, Alabama. There was a real Boo Radley; Atticus, of course, was based on her father, A.C.; Aunt Alexandra was modeled after her mother. The name Finch came from her mother's maiden name. Then there's the movie. Originally, Nelle wanted Spencer Tracy to play Atticus. It's also interesting to see how the focus of the movie changed from the children to Atticus and the Tom Robinson trial.

A shortcoming of the book is that Shields was never able to find out what the supposed second novel was about. Lee also tried to write a non-fiction book based on insurance scam murders where the man who committed them kept getting off. Shields says that the book was supposedly in production, but nothing ever came of it. Shields is forced to rely on a lot of hearsay because of Nelle's reluctance to be interviewed. For instance, a family member said that the second book was stolen during a burglary, and Nelle didn't have the heart to start over again.

For me, it was most instructive to follow Lee's early years in New York. Eventually she met the right people, Maurice Cain and her editor from Lippincott, but she spent almost ten years working as an airline ticket agent and fumbling with a series of sketches about Monroeville before Theresa von Hohoff whipped her project into shape. Not surprisingly, when von Hohoff and Cain died, Lee completely lost her will to pursue her literary ambitions 

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