The Book Cove

The literary world was rocked this week by news that a lost Harper Lee manuscript reemerged. To Kill a Mockingbird was always touted as the author’s first and only book. Go Set a Watchmen tells the story of Scout as an adult. Lee supposedly wrote it first, but the adult Scout’s interactions with Atticus so entranced the editor that he convinced her to set down the childhood story. The rest is publishing history. I have great fondness for To Kill a Mockingbird, a book I read in school. It had a spunky character in Scout at a time when girls in stories were generally relegated to being sweetly submissive to the boys. It was also one of the first assigned readings that was gripping and relevant rather than dull and preachy. I put more trust in my teachers after that. Naturally, this announcement has all fiction lovers in a tizzy. The discovery of a new work by Lee raises many questions and reads like a piece of fantasy itself. How can a manuscript get lost for ...