Alice comes to work at age ninety-eight dressed in the kind of clothing that you might have expected a woman to be wearing in 1940. The only difference now is she wears tennis shoes with them. But they are different. They complement each other. And it has always been very interesting to me to be with both of them.

For a long time, my wife, Hilda, and I would go with Nelle Harper and Alice out to Daily's Catfish every Sat.u.r.day for lunch. We'd sit in the same place, order the same thing. And the conversation that would go on between the two of them and around the table was just a wonderful enlightened conversation about the times. Both of them [are] grounded in great values. They hold on to old values, which is the tradition of this town and of this area.

I once referred to Nelle Harper as being conservative, and she corrected me. She said, "I'm not conservative. I'm independent."

Today, the Monroeville town square-it looks like the book. You walk up on the square and look at the storefronts around it and the old courthouse. You can close your eyes and imagine that you are back in the days of that book. Monroeville has changed a lot, but it still holds a lot of the traditions and understandings of reality that were extant in [the thirties]. In other ways, it is a modern town. People are very highly educated. In the church where I was the pastor, I had a very highly educated congregation.

People around here keep up with Nelle Harper, but they're also very protective of her. If an outsider comes in and tries to find where Harper Lee is, n.o.body will tell them. Many people who are looking for Harper Lee end up in my office, because a few stories have gotten out about my being a friend of hers, but the people in this town are protective of her. They care about her a great deal.

A lot of people think that she's a recluse, which is absolutely untrue. She's a person who enjoys her privacy like any other citizen would. She's not reclusive; it's very different from that. She's open, she loves to be around people and a.s.sociate with people. She does not like to be exploited by people. And she does not like to have her works exploited for profit by people.

For instance, for many years she would come to the book-shops here in town and autograph books for them to sell. And she wanted them to be sold for the same price they would ordinarily be sold for. She quit doing that when she discovered that people started taking signed books of hers and selling them on eBay for several hundred dollars. She quit signing books because she did not want people using her signature to exploit people in any way.

She has to be careful about how she relates to people, because she will get exploited. Any person who is a famous person, a celebrity, ends up in a situation where they are exploited by people trying to get their signature, have their picture made with them, or have a little bit of the reflected glory of that person in their own life. It happens. It happens.

But she is a real good person. She'd give you the shirt off her back.

She's just a common ordinary person with a brilliant mind who knows how to put a sentence together and a paragraph in an unusual way. If you were to read letters that she's written, it's almost like a chapter in a book.

She's funny in a smart way, in a brilliant sort of way. Her humor is not cra.s.s but a cla.s.sical kind of humor, describing things, and describing people and situations in which she has found herself from time to time. Her storytelling is almost like the writing of To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird.

She's the sort of a friend that I'd say anything to. You don't have to pretend to be somebody you're not around her simply because she's a celebrity. We argue about issues and argue about the meaning of things almost like a brother and a sister would discuss things with each other. We are very close friends.

Being famous and a celebrity is probably a lot of fun the first two or three months, but after you've been a celebrity for fifty years, I'm quite sure it gets old, when you have people look at you not for who you are but for the image that they have of you. And there are a lot of mythologies that get developed about her and about her relationship to Truman Capote. There are people who ask me, "Are you sure that Nelle Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird, or did Truman Capote write it?"

Well, if you read the two authors, it's very obvious that Truman Capote did not write To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird. But Nelle Harper did help him write and do the research for In Cold Blood In Cold Blood and went to Kansas and helped him. But there are a lot of mythologies that developed, and it's hard to disabuse people of the thought that maybe she didn't write that entire book, that maybe Truman did help her, which really isn't true. and went to Kansas and helped him. But there are a lot of mythologies that developed, and it's hard to disabuse people of the thought that maybe she didn't write that entire book, that maybe Truman did help her, which really isn't true.

We would like to think that she would write something else. But one book's been enough for her. It's been enough. She has controlled her own destiny. She doesn't have a PR person. She doesn't need one. The fact that she doesn't give interviews makes everybody all the more interested in her and in her life and in her book. I think she has led a happier life and certainly more contented life because she has chosen how she has related to the public. It's been with care and great caution that she's done so. She is a proud but a humble person. She loves people; she does a lot of good that n.o.body ever knows about. She does a lot of good through the church.

You read that book and you see how you ought to rear children; you see how you ought to relate to your fellow citizens. You see what your att.i.tude should be toward people who are different. And that is an issue in every age.

The persons may differ, but the issues are still there. And this book addresses those issues in an interesting and gentle way. It doesn't push them on you, but you can't read the book without seeing those values.

Rosanne Cash Rosanne Cash was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1955. Her fourteen alb.u.ms include Seven Year Ache Seven Year Ache (1981), (1981), The Wheel The Wheel (1993), (1993), Black Cadillac Black Cadillac (2006), and (2006), and The List The List (2009). She is the author of (2009). She is the author of Bodies of Water Bodies of Water (1996), a short story collection; (1996), a short story collection; Penelope Jane Penelope Jane (2000), a children's book; and (2000), a children's book; and Composed Composed (2010), a memoir. (2010), a memoir.

I was born in Memphis. I wasn't raised in the South, but I've spent plenty of time there. It makes me proud. It's the perfect Southern story. This whole book is a guide to parenting, number one. And then the language, of course. The naturalness that Atticus has with his children-there isn't this sense of modern angst about parenting. There is a beautiful intimacy between Atticus and Scout that you just want to get inside and that gives you so much feeling of love and comfort and integrity. Its beauty never ceases to amaze me and strike me. There's just this beautiful naturalness that he has and sense of confidence in his own skill as a parent. And respect for the child, that mutual respect. I just love it so much, it just gives so much satisfaction to read it. was born in Memphis. I wasn't raised in the South, but I've spent plenty of time there. It makes me proud. It's the perfect Southern story. This whole book is a guide to parenting, number one. And then the language, of course. The naturalness that Atticus has with his children-there isn't this sense of modern angst about parenting. There is a beautiful intimacy between Atticus and Scout that you just want to get inside and that gives you so much feeling of love and comfort and integrity. Its beauty never ceases to amaze me and strike me. There's just this beautiful naturalness that he has and sense of confidence in his own skill as a parent. And respect for the child, that mutual respect. I just love it so much, it just gives so much satisfaction to read it.

It's perfect. She created a whole world inside these pages that we get to enter in forever. It's perfect.

I don't remember the act of reading it for the first time, but I remember taking that feeling of integrity and sense of conscience and the idea that the way you behaved, whether people saw you or not, was central to becoming yourself, becoming who you were going to become in the world, that you had to first carve out a central sense of conscience.

My daughters have read it on their own. I'm looking forward to reading it to my son. He's not quite ready, but I think very soon. These kinds of people are rare in modern life-someone with absolute integrity. Atticus is a real grown-up. He knows who he is. He knows what's right and wrong. He acts out of compa.s.sion and personal integrity.

Those lessons you learn from your parents, the really key, profound life lessons, they're seared in your memory. They're few and they're precious, and this book makes poetry of it. If you find people like that, hold on to them; they are few and far between.

Mark Childress Mark Childress was born in Monroeville, Alabama, in 1957, and grew up in Mississippi. He is the author of six novels, including Crazy in Alabama Crazy in Alabama (1993), (1993), Gone for Good Gone for Good (1998), and (1998), and One Mississippi One Mississippi (2006). (2006).

The first time I read To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird I was in Monroeville, Alabama. It was two doors down from Nelle Harper Lee's house. And I was on the porch of Miss Wanda Biggs's house. Miss Wanda Biggs was my mother's best friend. She was one of Monroeville's notable busybodies. She was the Welcome Wagon lady, who chased Gregory Peck all over town to give him a welcome basket. She also operated a switchboard from her home. She got the doctors and the lawyers, and she answered phone calls for everybody. So she knew everything that was going on in town. I was in Monroeville, Alabama. It was two doors down from Nelle Harper Lee's house. And I was on the porch of Miss Wanda Biggs's house. Miss Wanda Biggs was my mother's best friend. She was one of Monroeville's notable busybodies. She was the Welcome Wagon lady, who chased Gregory Peck all over town to give him a welcome basket. She also operated a switchboard from her home. She got the doctors and the lawyers, and she answered phone calls for everybody. So she knew everything that was going on in town.

I was about nine years old, and she said, "I think it's time for you to read this." She put it in my hands, and it was a first edition signed to her that I'm sure I spilled Coca-Cola on, and every other thing. G.o.d, I wish I had that book. Every few hours she would wander out and say, "Now you see that stump over there? That's the tree where Boo hid the presents for the children. Did you get to the part yet about the school? If you go down this little pathway, that is where the school is."

That was the first adult novel that I had ever read, and I was just about the age of Scout when I read it, and I was reading it in the setting where it happened. And it's the reason I'm a writer today-something about seeing that ugly little town, which at that point had been sort of stripped of all of its charms, transformed into this magical thing that was in my hands. I guess it would be like if you came from Reggie Jackson's hometown, you'd want to be a baseball player.

It became real to me that Miss Wanda knew the lady who wrote this, that this was a novel written out of this place where I was right now, and how it somehow became this magic on the page. I'll never forget being in that swing reading it. It took me about three days. I read it about every year, just as a refresher course. It's a really good book.

Every time I go back, I'm impressed more by the simplicity of the prose. I think the reason that we think it's so cla.s.sic is that the prose is not adorned; it's very plain. Although it's plainly written from the point of view of an adult, looking back through a child's eyes, there's something beautifully innocent about the point of view, and yet it's very wise. So it's a combination of either a wise child or an innocent adult, the point of view.

The fact that Scout is surprised by people's racism is what was revolutionary about the book. Most little kids in little towns like that, they weren't surprised, because racism was all around them. It was the fabric of life. When I was three years old, my grandmother and I would walk down the main street of Greeneville, which was the little town where she lived, and black men would get off the sidewalk as a sign of respect. And if I walked down the sidewalk, at five years old-by myself-they would get off the sidewalk as a sign of respect to me. And this was in the mid-sixties, after the book came out.

We think of this book as being a postcivil rights novel, but it was published before the biggest explosions of the civil rights movement, and helped bring it along, I think. You know that famous quote Lincoln [reportedly] said to Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Oh, here's the little lady whose book caused such a big war." I think the same can be said of Harper Lee, that To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird was one of the most influential novels, not necessarily in a literary sense, but in a social sense. was one of the most influential novels, not necessarily in a literary sense, but in a social sense.

It gives white Southerners a way to understand the racism that they've been brought up with and to find another way. And for white Southerners at that time, there was no other way. There were either outsiders yelling at you because you were a racist cracker, or your leaders, George Wallace saying, "I'll never be out-n.i.g.g.e.red again." There was no middle ground. Most white people in the South were good people. Most white people in the South were not throwing bombs and causing havoc, but they had been raised in the system. I think the book really helped them come to understand what was wrong with the system in a way that any number of treatises could never do, because it was popular art, told from a child's point of view.

We think of it as a contemporary book, but it is set in the thirties. So it also helped the white Southerner because there was distance between the South she was writing about and the present day when it was published. That allowed them to feel, "Well, we've moved a little beyond that." And because she was a white Southerner, there was something that allowed them to hear what she was trying to say.

It's just a child trying to understand, trying to make sense of something that doesn't make any sense, trying to organize it. I guess I've spent my whole writing career trying to do the same thing, laboring in the shadow of making sense of what race meant in the South. How do you grow up having come from that system? It's a lot of interesting problems.

I don't think that kids today read it with the same edge that we did as children, because the segregation was still very real when I was reading that book. When I went to the swimming pool, there were no colored children allowed. The signs said WHITE WHITE and and COLORED COLORED. When we went to the Dairy Queen, there were two lines: There was a white window, and there was a black window. So, it was a radical book at that time in the South. It might not have been that way in the rest of the country, but it said radical things.

There are a lot of people in the novel who are not quite what they seem, and there's a few people who are what they seem, and they're the heroes of the book-Miss Maudie, and Atticus, and old Boo, too.

Scout was about half boy. Scout's a real tomboy, you know, and Dill was about half girl. The two of them, they were both odd birds in their town, which is sort of the other theme that runs through the book. They're not like the other kids either. If you notice any time that other kids are seen in the book, it's always in opposition; our little group is never playing with them. And I think there's one moment where she talks about it, because she was the daughter of the lawyer, people thought she was above them. There's some stuff about the social stratification of the town too, that is really interesting. There's just a lot in the book. And that's why I keep rereading it, because I always find something new.

I was looking at the movie recently and realizing how much Gregory Peck made the movie Atticus's movie. And the book is really Scout's book. It's Scout and Jem's book. It's really about the children's learning; the whole town teaches them a little bit at a time.

I don't really remember Dill from my first reading of the book. It's kind of that weird little kid in the movie made a bigger impression on me. So that's one of the elements of the book I find hard to separate from the movie, because I saw the movie four or five years after I read the book.

It's really well done. Scout's entrance is one of the greatest entrances in movie history. She swings into the frame on the tire swing and drops. It's just so Scout, it's perfect. And it's a beautiful script. I think probably Miss Nelle would be the first to say that Horton Foote adapted that with infinite care and it's one of those rare cases where the movie's not as good as the book but it's right up there and doesn't take away from the book.

Atticus-what can you say about him? When you were a kid, you wanted to have a dad like that. There's something a little bit idealized about him. And I'm sure that's the way with all great heroes of fiction. He's a little bit too good to be true, but in the book he's got more b.u.mps than he's allowed to have in the movie. So I like him a little better in the book. He's more recognizable to me.

Whenever people talk to me because I was born there, they say, "What's in the water in Monroeville?" Well, there's nothing in the water, but it's like I said, the most famous person in Alabama was Harper Lee. She was a novelist. I think most kids never meet a novelist.

Miss Wanda was pointing out to me the parts of it that were physically real. I think she was doing that to keep me going through the book. She didn't realize that I was completely hooked on it. It's something that really fascinates readers, like which part's true, which part is made up. And I've never quite understood that. To me, everything in a novel's real, and I really don't care where the author got it. But for readers that is important. They love to know how much of it was autobiographical.

Any writer who says he doesn't write out of his own life is lying. Of course he does-all your writing is based on your own life. But it's "Do you transform the material?" And I think that's what she did, and put such magic on it. But yeah, her life was probably something like the life in there, but it wasn't so beautifully dramatically shaped, and there wasn't one moment that pulled it all together. That's the beauty of fiction, that's what fiction can do: give shape to narrative.

I have absolutely no idea why she never published another book. But I don't blame her, and I think in a way it was probably the right decision, although I sure would love to have had the other books. When you bat the ball out [of] the park the very first time you ever step up, why would you ever pick up the bat again? I think she was very wise to stay away from it. She's probably had a much happier life because she did that. I think, for some people, publicity's just like poison. I think she had just enough of it, just enough fame right there at the beginning that, one day, she probably woke up and said, "I don't want to do this anymore." It might also have been knowing Truman and watching what it was doing to him at that point in their lives. Even though he was wildly famous and successful, he wasn't very happy. I think she probably saw that.

It takes a kind of courage that almost n.o.body has in this country, where celebrity is our religion; it's replaced religion for a lot of people. To turn away from the church of publicity and say, "I'm not going to pray there. I'm not going to appear there. I don't want my picture." It's a kind of blasphemy in this society that she commits by refusing to partic.i.p.ate in the publicity machine. I certainly understand that impulse she had, to close the door and go back to her private life.

Of course, she had the great freedom of being able to live off the proceeds of her book, which most writers don't have. So, you know, that liberated her to be able to do that. If the book had sold four thousand copies, I bet you there would have been a second novel, and I bet you she'd have been out there hustling just like the rest of us!

I hope she kept writing, because she's a beautiful writer. I used to hear those rumors Truman helped her write it, or Truman wrote it for her. There's a kind of hostility in that that always took me aback. In the first place, it's a s.e.xist a.s.sumption that somehow she couldn't do it without his help. I think the reverse is probably truer, that he couldn't have done In Cold Blood In Cold Blood [without her], because a lot of those people in Kansas wouldn't talk to him. I bet you he helped her with [without her], because a lot of those people in Kansas wouldn't talk to him. I bet you he helped her with To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird. I'll bet he gave it a read. I bet he went through it with his pencil. That's what friends do for each other.

Maybe it's just because she never published another book that people a.s.sume that she had to have had some help, that she couldn't do it over again the second time. I got a letter from her one time that absolutely proved to me that she wrote every word of To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird, 'cause the voice is completely the voice of the book. It's the most beautifully, eloquently written letter. So I know that people are lying when they say that.

To be honest, I think she's probably enjoyed playing the recluse. She has a great sense of humor-just read the book. I think it probably gives her pleasure to watch people chase after her. I think that's probably kind of fun.

She goes out and lives her life. Luckily, even the most famous writer in America can be anonymous. I guess Truman couldn't have gone much of anywhere without being recognized. But most writers can. And I think that's probably why she's kept her hand in, staying in Monroeville. People leave her alone there. And when she lives in New York, people leave her alone. So it's a pretty good life she's got going.

I've had some friends who've had huge success with their first book and have spent the rest of their careers where every review begins with "the author of the previous book" and this one doesn't ever quite measure up. The reviews were bound to be bad in comparison to To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird.

I wouldn't have wanted that kind of success, though, on my first book. No way. It would have killed my career the way it did hers. I would love to have had her as a functioning writer, writing ten novels so that I could sit down, read, and wait for the new Harper Lee novel to come out, but I think the success of the book took that away from us. I think the success was just too much, and she just didn't want to go there, she didn't want to wade into that. I don't blame her.

Jane Ellen Clark Jane Ellen Clark was born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1948. She is the executive director of the Monroe County Heritage Museum in Monroeville, Alabama.

The first time I remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird was in 1996, when I started working here. I got calls from teachers who wanted to know things about the book that were real. They would call and ask about a character. The first question I got that I didn't know the answer to was, "Who in the town was Mister Avery?" I didn't even know who Mister Avery was. So I had to quickly get the book and look that up. He's the boarder at Miss Maudie's. was in 1996, when I started working here. I got calls from teachers who wanted to know things about the book that were real. They would call and ask about a character. The first question I got that I didn't know the answer to was, "Who in the town was Mister Avery?" I didn't even know who Mister Avery was. So I had to quickly get the book and look that up. He's the boarder at Miss Maudie's.

What I discovered that year was how multilayered this book is. And now, I like to listen to it. I really hear things when it's being read to me. Many of the teachers who come here tell me that they read this book aloud to their students every year-the whole book-because they love to read it.

As I learn more about Monroe County history, I hear things in the book that I relate to something. I think the last thing was Barker's Eddy in the book. I thought that's an interesting way to describe the creek. 'Cause I know what an eddy is in a river. So I thought, Hmm, in a creek, would that be the same thing? Hmm, in a creek, would that be the same thing?

So I started asking around, and just by accident found out that all the kids in Monroeville in the thirties and forties went to a Parker's Eddy to learn to swim. I said, "Why do you call it an eddy?" It's a creek that is really close to the Alabama River and when the river's high, the water does come back in. So that's why they call it an eddy. The people I asked would say "Gosh, I need to go back down there and see if that's still a good swimming hole."

Everything that I see or hear in the book I can relate to something. There's a pa.s.sage about the chapel at Finch's Landing, the organ in the chapel. I live up in the north part of the county in Old Bell's Landing, and our little Methodist church has a pump organ. We grew up singing hymns as my aunt played the pump organ.

I think the town in the book is really close to the town of Monroeville in the thirties. I do also hear, though, from people all over the country who say, "It's a lot like my little town." I love to hear that, because it makes me feel good that there are towns like that out there, that we're not the only one. We have a lot of history here, and we care about it, so I'm glad that there are other people who relate to it like I do. But I do think that she was talking about her town, and her family, and all the people that she knew here, situations here. George Thomas Jones [a town historian] said to me the other day, "Well, you know, we were here. We knew all those people, all those situations that she's writing about. But could we write a Pulitzer Prizewinning book about it that has never been out of print? No. That's her genius."

My mother was in the same room at school with Harper Lee. I grew up coming here from Pensacola, up to the family land. We'd go right by the school, the site of the house of the recluse that becomes Boo Radley [in the book], that's the neighborhood of Monroeville that I think Harper Lee made into Maycomb. Mama would say things as we would come by. She told about Son Boulware, who was the boy who was put into the house, and how scared they were of him, how spooky the house was. Some people in town remember the incident. [After Son Boulware was caught breaking into a store,] his father took him home and said, "My son won't go to reform school." Some say that the boys in his cla.s.s would go visit and he would help them with their algebra. But the next year, he didn't come back to school, and then those boys left. By the time my mother was ten, around 1936, n.o.body had seen him. All the legends had built up, and by then the kids were scared to even ride their bikes by the front of the house. I went to the cemetery to try to find his grave and found out his full name. It's Alfred Boulware. The epitaph is so wonderful: "To live in hearts left behind is not to die." [Boo] really is the hero in the end. He saves the children's life. So Harper Lee saw something else about that boy that my mother and the rest of the kids didn't.

Mama was a country kid who had to ride the bus in, and the buses weren't like we have now. They were trucks with benches in the back-covered, though. She would have to come to town with her lunch, or with a nickel to go across the street, 'cause there was a little store across from the elementary school to get something to eat.

She always told me when we pa.s.sed that schoolyard, "Oh, yes, one day we were out there playing, and you weren't supposed to slide into base. I was on first base, and Nelle Harper slid in and knocked me down in that red clay, and she knew I couldn't go home at lunch to change." So fifty years later, Mama still remembers being embarra.s.sed with the red clay stains on her clothes.

People in town say that Mister A. C. Lee, Harper Lee's father, was a lot like the character of Atticus-soft-spoken, dignified, and did the right thing. The only character Harper Lee says is real is Dill, who was Truman Capote. People in town say the same thing.

Monroeville in the 1930s was very much like the [town in] the book. Just the other day, Ann Farish, who grew up here and was in the same room at school with Harper Lee, said to me that she and her friend would go down the alleys off the stores here on the square to look for change. She said, "You know, men had holes in their pockets. Times were hard. We wore our clothes until they had holes in 'em." So the things that I read in this book, I'm also finding in interviews with people, and things that have been written about the time.

They say that [Monroeville in the thirties] was only about one or two blocks out from the square. The square was the center of town. And Sat.u.r.day was the shopping day, when all the country people would come to town. Even in the sixties, I remember coming through Monroeville, and there would be people that came to town to shop with their wagon and mules. So when she talks about the Hoover carts in the book, that was real. During the Depression, people didn't have any money to buy gasoline. So they took the tires off of their old cars, and put them on their wagons, and still used their mule or horse to pull it. But it rolled better. That was a Hoover cart.

It's so multilayered. There are so many characters from every walk of life. You really feel like you are reading about a real town. The themes in the book teachers use every year to teach about prejudice and outsiders and love. Teachers have helped this book live on and on because they teach it every year, and that's how whole generations of kids read it.

It's so real, it feels so real. And it's so gentle. It talks about really hard issues, but from Scout's point of view. It's kind of a slow-moving book. You have time to think about all these things as you're reading about this town.

The movie, of course, made our courtroom famous. We say [it's] the most famous courtroom in America, because when the film rights were sold, they came to try to film here but decided the town had changed too much. We were still having court here in 1962, and they decided to build that courtroom on the sound-stage at the back lot of Universal Studios. Henry b.u.mstead was the art designer, [and] won an Oscar for that movie. He told me that he took pictures, he measured it, and he wanted to get the proportions right. He wanted that courtroom, the one that Harper Lee grew up with. Harper Lee went to Hollywood and helped him on the set. She didn't stay, they say, for much of the filming. But b.u.mstead said that she would come on the set and help him with, "That's the right chair, that's the wrong table," that kind of thing. So he credits her for helping him win that Oscar.

Since the thirties, the town's spread out, that's for sure. And on Sat.u.r.days, the square's dead, which is very different. People shop elsewhere now. We have a Walmart. The downtown is some lawyers' offices, a few stores, and the post office. But in '35, everything was here. The Jitney Jungle [a supermarket Miss Stephanie mentions in the novel]-we really had one. V. J. Elmore's was a department store [where Jem bought Scout her baton]. Bedsole's was another department store. Everything was here in town. The doctors, the drugstores, dentists, even a boardinghouse.

We know that she doesn't want to meet all these people who come here. They started coming in 1960, when the book came out. We don't take any credit for the fact that we have twenty thousand people visit this town. We know why they're coming. And we understand that she decided to quit doing interviews. Everybody here knows that. So we don't tell people where she lives or really anything about her business. We just try to answer their questions about the book and about the town. Because everybody wants to know what was real and what wasn't. We try to just tell what we know about who really lived here during that time.

When I came to work here in '96, I would see Harper Lee around town. During the fall through the Christmas holidays, on into January and February, and then, sometime in the spring, I would realize I hadn't seen her. I would hear that she had gone back to New York on the train. But she always came home for the holidays. I would look out the window, and she'd be going into the post office. She would come out with armloads of mail, go to the car, sit there and open something. She would be at the grocery store. She would go to church. She was not a recluse at all. She just wanted her privacy. So we didn't tell people, "Go here, and go there, you may see her." We just knew that she was around, and [we were] glad that she would come back to Monroeville.

There are so many people who say to me, "This is my favorite book ever." They love her. They want to tell her how much they love her. But she doesn't want that. It would be too much. So this museum is not a place that she would want to be, because they would recognize her and try to talk to her about the book.

I think she's a realist. She had to write the book. She went to New York to get it published. That was her goal. And then she wasn't prepared for the publicity, the fame. I respect the fact that she was able to step back from that. Look what happened to Truman. He loved it. He loved the attention. She decided not to do that. And so, to come to Monroeville and be able to move around the way she does here is pretty amazing.

Truman Capote's mother brought him back to Monroeville to live with the cousins who raised her. She and her brothers and sisters were orphans. He came when he was a baby and was taken care of by these old cousins. He went to the first grade, part of the second grade, and then went to New York to live with his mother, who had married Joe Capote by then. But he came back every summer to play with Nelle.

On South Alabama Street is Mel's Dairy Dream, and that was where Harper Lee grew up. Her house was torn down in 1951 or '52 when Mister Lee sold it and Mel's Dairy Dream was built. So generations of people in Monroeville have gone there for milk-shakes and hamburgers, and still do.

The book seems so familiar, and then we a.s.sume things. I hear townspeople interchange the name of the real person and the character that they think was the model. In conversation, when they're talking about the real person, they'll use the fictional name.

Harper Lee's mother was Frances Cunningham Finch, and Frances Finch's father was the postmaster up at Finchburg, which was up near Williams Landing. He married Ellen Williams, and they lived in that area. All the stuff in the book about Finch's Landing, I relate to Williams Landing, which was a steamboat landing right there, where her family lived. Frances Cunningham Finch married A. C. Lee and moved to Monroeville. They had Alice, Louise, Ed, and Nelle. Mrs. Lee died in 1951. I'm not sure what of. Ed died in 1951 of an aneurism, they think. He was at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery. So that was two deaths in their family that year, 1951.

A. B. Bla.s.s [who owned the local hardware store] says he delivered papers to Mrs. Lee, and she would be sitting out on the porch swing in the afternoon dressed in a gingham dress, like a lot of the ladies did. They finished their work in the morning. They cooked dinner, which is the noon meal, and then, in the afternoons, they would sit on the porch and visit with people.

He would take her the paper. And she'd say, "You're such a nice young man." I really haven't heard other people talk about her. Jennings Carter stayed at the Faulk house a lot and played with Truman and with Harper Lee. He remembers Mrs. Lee playing the piano.

When the book came out in 1960, I wasn't here. So I began asking people, "What did you think [when the book first came out]?" Most people said that they didn't pay it any mind. I asked my mama, and she said, "Well, it just seemed so familiar, we didn't see anything special about it."

When the movie rights were sold and Gregory Peck came to Monroeville, that's when they sat up and took notice. Everybody has a story of Gregory Peck just being here in this town, staying at the hotel, eating in the restaurants, and visiting Mister Lee. That's when people noticed the book. If Hollywood's gonna make a movie out of this book, then there's something about it that's special. One girl said that Gregory Peck came into the bank and wrote a check. She was so nervous she had a hard time giving him his money.

Some young girls rode around town trying to find him to get his autograph. He and Harper Lee were meeting at a little motel, and the girls found out where they were. They dared one another to go and knock on the door. So Martha Moorer had to go and knock on the door. And Harper Lee answered and said, "Martha Louise, what are you doing here? Leave us alone," or something like that, and started to shut the door. But Gregory Peck said, "No, it's OK. I'll give her my autograph." She cannot find that autograph, though, 'cause I asked her for a copy of it.

When the book came out in 1960, Ernestine's Book and Gift Store bought copies, and there was a signing. Everybody in town came to have their book signed. Ernestine bought five hundred copies, and they sold. One lady said, "We just were appalled that she bought that many. We didn't think that many would sell. We were afraid for her to lose money."

Now those people are bringing their books in to show me because they are valuable and rare.

I don't know a lot about her relationship with Truman. I just know how close they were when they were children. I just feel like...they were friends the rest of his life. Because friendships that you form when you're a kid with someone who is of like mind really do endure.

I know she wants to stay a mystery and let the book stand for itself. Half the people now who come here say, "I don't need to go and see her. I love the book. And I have the book." I see the word recluse recluse in articles all the time, and that's not true. She's not a recluse. Each year we put on in articles all the time, and that's not true. She's not a recluse. Each year we put on To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird, the play, and that's our big fund-raiser to keep this building intact. It's a county building, but we don't get funding from them. It was this building that Harper Lee had in mind when she wrote her book.

Allan Gurga.n.u.s Allan Gurga.n.u.s was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in 1947. He is the author of three novels, including, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1989) and (1989) and White People White People (1990), and a collection of short stories, (1990), and a collection of short stories, Plays Well with Others Plays Well with Others (1997). (1997).