“Mockingbirds sing sweetly and can mimic dozens of other birds,” Marja Mills writes in The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee. “They are tough, too, however, and don’t take kindly to other birds infringing on their territory. There’s something strong but also vulnerable about mockingbirds; those qualities applied to the one in the tree as well as the ones living in the modest brick house next door to the similar one I was renting.”
Lee, who suffered a stroke in ’07 and moved to an assisted living center, hasn’t given a major interview to a journalist aside from Mills since 1964, four years after the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird. She’s touchy about the revered work’s image; just last month a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit she filed against an Alabama museum for trying to “capitalize on the fame” of the novel. Lee may even have a problem with The Mockingbird Next Door: in April 2011, she issued a statement in which she denied participating in or authorizing the book—a point Mills fails to note.
By Marja Mills (The Penguin Press)
Getting to Know Harper Lee, with Marja Mills Mon 7/21, 6 PM Tribune Tower 435 N. Michigan 312-222-4369marjamills.eventbrite.com $15
