50 years on, new book from ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ author

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Pulitzer Prize-winning author Harper Lee will publish her second novel more than 50 years after the release of her classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” her publisher said yesterday.

“Go Set a Watchman,” which is set in the 1950s and features lead characters from “To Kill a Mockingbird” some 20 years older, is scheduled to be published on July 14 by publisher Harper. The book was actually written in the 1950s, before “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and Lee, 88, thought it had been lost.

“It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman and I thought it a pretty decent effort,” Lee said in a statement issued by Harper. “My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel from the point of view of the young Scout. I was a first-time writer so I did as I was told.”

In “Go Set a Watchman,” Scout returns from New York to visit her father, Atticus, in the fictional town of Maycomb, where she struggles with personal and political issues and tries to understand her father’s view toward society as well as her own conflicted feelings about her hometown.