FROM THE BOOK JACKET:

The setting is a dusty Southern town during the Depression. A white woman accuses a black man of rape. Though he is obviously innocent, the outcome of his trial is such a foregone conclusion that no lawyer will step forward to defend him – except the town's most distinguished citizen. His compassionate defense costs him many friendships but earns him the respect and admiration of his two motherless children.

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill a Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960.  It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill a Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior – to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos.  Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story.  Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926 in Monroeville Alabama. Harper Lee was the grade school classmate of the young Truman Capote, with whom she maintained a friendship well into adulthood. The youngest of four children, Harper attended Huntingdon College 1944-45, studied law at University of Alabama 1945-49, and spent a year at Oxford University. In the 1950s she moved to New York City where, after working briefly as an airline reservation clerk, she decided to focus exclusively on her writing. She moved into a cold-water flat and began writing To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1957 she submitted the manuscript to the J. B. Lippincott Company and was told that her novel read too much like a series of loosely connected short stories. She spent the next two and a half years revising the book and in 1960 it was published to widespread acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize and thousands of devoted readers.  –ReadingGroupGuide.com

HOW THE BOOK WAS SELECTED:

A panel of library staff developed a list of suggested book titles to use in the 2006 project. Ballots were then placed at all Lee County Library System locations, at the annual Lee County/Southwest Florida Reading Festival, and online for the public to make their selection.

Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” was a landslide winner!  Thank you for voting, and please remember to cast a ballot in March and April 2006 for our next One Book, One Community: Lee County Reads project.