Go Set a Watchman

Peering into Elm Street Books yesterday all I could see were copies of Go, Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. I read To Kill A Mockingbird (published in 1960) at school and loved the film staring Gregory Peck, who played the role of Atticus Finch, father to Scout and Jem and moral hero for many.  

Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird and was originally written in the mid-1950's. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014. The book was published in July 2015 as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. It features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Returning home from New York to visit her father Atticus Finch, Jean Louise Finch (Scout) struggles with issues both personal and political, involving his society, and the small Alabama town of Maycomb that shaped her.

Exploring how the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird adjust to the turbulent events which transformed mid-1950s America, Go Set a Watchman casts a fascinating new light on Harper Lee's classic. Moving, funny and compelling, it stands as a magnificent novel in its own right.

It's an obvious read this summer but you can be sure it will be a great one. Here is the New York Times Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/books/review-harper-lees-go-set-a-watchman-gives-atticus-finch-a-dark-side.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0

Nelle Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. She attended Huntingdon College and studied law at the University of Alabama. She is the author of two novels, To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman. Harper Lee has been awarded numerous literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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