The Land of Sweet Forever

The publication of To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960 created an overnight sensation: the novel won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to sell in the millions. Scout, Jem, Atticus, and the other indelible characters helped to create a landmark in the American canon. Another, darker version of small-town Alabama in the late 1950s emerged in Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee’s only other novel, published in 2015 after its rediscovery. Less remembered, until now, however, is Lee the dogged young writer, who crafted stories in hopes of magazine publication; Lee the devoted friend, who cultivated rich connections in Alabama and New York and accompanied her childhood companion Truman Capote to Kansas as he prepared to write the genre-defining In Cold Blood; and Lee the moviegoer, New Yorker, scholar, and citizen, who peppered the pages of McCall’s and Vogue with humane, thoughtful, wryly comic, and acutely observed essays in the latter part of the twentieth century.