The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, July 2014: In 2001, Chicago Tribune journalist Marja Mills traveled to Monroeville, Alabama in search of something that no other journalist had been able to land: an interview with the reclusive Harper Lee. Instead, she got an interview with her older sister, Alice--content with that, Mills prepared to return to Chicago to write her story. But then she got word that Lee (known as “Nelle” to those close to her) wanted to sit down for a “visit.” Many visits later they were friends, and in 2004 Mills was even invited to move in next door to the Lee sisters’ home. Underneath the plain, clear language of The Mockingbird Next Door is an enchanting, atmospheric portrait of two sisters and the southern town they inhabit (when Harper Lee is not living in New York). Mills makes a point of avoiding gossip, but that hardly matters. The book is compelling and charming; and it brings Harper Lee and her world, both past and present, to full life. --Chris Schluep