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In Mockingbird, biographer Charles Shields quashes one persistent rumor about Harper Lee. Lee's childhood friend Truman Capote did not write or co-write her only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. He made editing suggestions, but it is Lee's novel.
Shields does, however, validate another rumor. Lee gave Capote more help while he was researching In Cold Blood than he ever acknowledged. Though it is generally known that Lee eased Capote's way in Kansas with her down-to-earth manner, she also provided sharp and extensive notes.
Mockingbird makes the reader look at Harper Lee with new and respectful eyes. People obsess about why Lee, now 80, never published another novel after her 1960 classic, the tale of a Southern lawyer who defends a black man unfairly accused of rape by a white woman -- told through the eyes of a 9-year-old girl, Scout Finch.
According to Shields, who interviewed 600 people but not the writer herself, Lee is neither a recluse nor is she tormented by her one-book career. Instead, she continues to do what she has done since girlhood: resist society's expectations and live according to her own values.
Shields writes that Lee's rebellion began with her refusal to comply with her mother's expectations about appropriate Southern female behavior. She mystified her Chi Omega sorority sisters at the University of Alabama by wearing sweatshirts and jeans instead of makeup and dresses.
Shields describes Lee's childhood as marked by her unstable mother's behavior and by her loving father's attention. To Kill a Mockingbird's Atticus Finch is based on her father, an Alabama lawyer and legislator.
In his well-meaning if often awkwardly written biography, Shields does not pry deeply into Lee's personal life. If Lee has wrestled with any personal demons, Shields isn't dishing.
Instead he focuses on her debut work. He details how personalities and chance created To Kill a Mockingbird -- a patient, experienced, older editor; devoted literary agents; and good friends who gave Lee enough money to write for a year. When this support system broke down because of illnesses and retirement, Lee found herself unable to produce more.
This is not a particularly sexy answer to the question of why Harper Lee has published only one novel. But it is logical and admirable -- much like Shields' biography.
Mockingbird: A Portrait
of Harper Lee
By Charles J. Shields
Holt, 338 pp., $25
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