Release
Date: July 15, 2014
Publisher:
Penguin
ISBN:
978-1594205194
ARC Source: Penguin
Pretty much everyone has been exposed to Harper Lee’s
To Kill a Mockingbird at some point,
whether it is through personal exploration or a school reading assignment. Many,
including myself, will tell you that the novel has left an imprint on their
reading lives, forever engraving Scout and Atticus into their list of
unforgettable characters.
After To Kill
a Mockingbird was published 1960, it quickly won the Pulitzer Prize and
became a staple in American classrooms. To this day, teachers, like myself,
anxiously wait to ask their students on the first day of school if they have
read the novel, silently hoping the answer is no. We each want ownership
of exposing Maycomb to today’s generation. As teachers, we have always finished
the novel and nostalgically left Scout and Jem’s town behind, wondering what life was
really like, how much of the story was based on Lee’s life, and why Lee became
so reclusive. Now, Marja Mills steps forward with her memoir to give us some
answers.
Marja Mills was able to do what many can only dream
of—meet, interview, and live on the same road as an award-winning author. Not any author, either, but the author of one of the most beloved books ever
written—Nelle Harper Lee. Through her memoir, Mills eloquently, and with a nod to Lee's prose, describes life
with Nelle and her older sister Alice in Monroeville, Alabama, the inspiration
for Maycomb. First visiting for an interview for a story in the Chicago Tribune, Mills becomes acquaintances,
then eventually close friends, with both Nelle and Alice.
Progressively earning Nelle’s trust, Mills is able
to listen to numerous stories of the South, specifically about Nelle and Alice’s
childhood memories. It becomes easy to see all of the influences that helped Harper
Lee create Scout and Atticus Finch. In Scout, we see Nelle’s curiosity,
spunk, and compassion. In Atticus, we see Alice’s passion for law and
equality. Everywhere, we see Maycomb, though the Lee sisters readily admit that
Monroeville has changed too much and no longer represents the town they loved.
The memoir not only follows Mills’ encounters with
the Lee sisters. Instead, it is, in its own right, an account of how Mills
suffers from Lupus, of which she was diagnosed in 2001. Mills powers through
her condition to continue to interview and research for her article and beyond for this book. She, unwillingly and ashamedly, is cared for by Nelle and
Alice when her Lupus flares, and it is in these moments that we see the Harper
Lee that we all envision and wish to meet.
Addition: The veracity and authenticity of this memoir has been called into question with several statements by Harper Lee that she did not approve of the biography.
