and i cannot afford such gimmicky would storm the country in the fashion never done before he has three major trips this is the first time it is ever happened maybe before they have gone on the road to a gathering but you could count the number of times they spoke on the road with a front porch campaign benjamin harrison basically with those 80 speeches that he gave over the four months period but nobody had gone on a train to go someplace it is an amazing testament to his insurance because in

august and september he is making his own train reservations riding in a common car grabbing a sandwich at the depot someplace in helping with the guide to the end of the line somebody would pick him up with a hotel reservation. sometimes he has a private car as he goes through kentucky and tennessee he has had a private rail car provided but sometimes is that they're ahead of the campaign who writes his compatriot to senator james jones to say i saw this of hellenized reticulate train to baltimore we waited until

2:00 in the morning to switch we got him on in there were a handful of people there. we if he has a private car he could fall asleep the train picks him up he could wake up and wash his face so then he is traveling. >> so mckinley is pressed to go on the road once panics debt -- says it is unstoppable he starts to believe he has a race on his hands and mckinley says if i go on and the road we will have to mimic him. i know what it is like.

and finally he says i have to think before i speak. somebody said let's make that my routine? so the people don't show up on my doorstep. know who is coming in and fight the people we want not just those who volunteer if it is the critical voter group have them send this what they want to say in advance and will have remarks taken to the courthouse square. and when the moment comes we

will have an organized program they will give me a us a gift if i have time i shake their hand then we move on. this is a campaign on the industrial scale. 760,000 people come to canton ohio. it is regimented they show up and go to the town square, shopping, the merchants to. >> sometimes they do well or feed them that the tabernacle is industrial in scale he knows exactly what he wants to say it is

repeated in this is what he said. >> host: which of these two men addressed more people? >> i am convinced by the number it was between two and 3 million he would go everywhere but he attracted spectators in mckinley attracted supporters he was targeted he created an army of people to serve as our surrogates in our absence they had groups for blacks in truman's they're organized traveling salesman because they traveled widely in spoke well there was a big raise sweeping the country they decided to tap

it. >> host: what happens to election day? >> mckinley wins the northeast there isn't a single chianti that goes for brian. he takes the traditional battleground new jersey connecticut and ohio and wins most of that critical battleground state uses as the rocky mountains he loses the south and that critical breakthrough were mckinley wins the republicans have now won in decades. nt takes or again in their

early care of -- california. with the reelection in 1872 with a dominant majority. >> and what are the consequences? >> it is a combination of immigrants and laborers that gives them dominance for the next 36 years up through the depression and the republicans told the house and the only time they lose power is in 1912 and the mayors of most major cities are from boston or new york or philadelphia republican mayors left and right because there is a coalition of industrial workers and small town farmers with the

traditional small business allies ended is the unstoppable coalition. >> see you credit them with real creativity and foresight to since his time has been like jim? >> fdr was a consummate politician to blow up the republican coalition but james was that element of the republican party had varying read anti-semitic voices as a result of the jewish voters became republican and then they

drift back into the democrats under roosevelt. >> anybody else? >> reagan in his own way but politics have changed but those of the to read would pick more than anyone. >> host: it is an entertaining book packed with information with wonderful details which is the question of who gets that opening invitation? is it a of a protestant minister or catholic priest? >> we can lead directs to give the indication which is more than anything else that was suspect so it is an

enormous signal that i am in charge but as a result of the attitude is the first candidate to receive the endorsement but the rabbi is there with that indication. >> host: great detail. thank you very much.

. . while.

you come across this non-descript town. court house. scare -- square. it is the center of this >> it's the center of the biggest book. what you'll find is the home a properly. >> tell us what you will find their. >> you will find a landlocked town in alabama. a town that hasn't changed much. watch out from those armadillos across the road, keep an eye out for the kfc. there was a time when the town council is going to tear down the old courthouse. as you see in the film because they built the 1960s square block, cinderblock courthouse and thought they did not need the old one.

now it has been restored and when you walk in it is like a church. people talk in hushed tones, it's a shrine to american literary culture. probably the best thing about that town is there still no museum, still no re- constructed home. it's a square, the bricks are still there, some of the boundary walls of the house and there's a plaque out front and then just a yard and it is right next to the tent shot. is where that walk-in area is. the rock stone wall separating the properties that truman used to turn cartwheels on to impress everybody is still there. it is a town that seems almost reluctant to embrace.

it's a southern concorde. >> it's a much different town from oxford which also has a courthouse in the square. it's also sort sort of a shrine to its author. oxford is sort of small town theme park for about 3 miles around there. it's a most perfectly preserved. it still has a little stuffy around the corners. >> oxford has bookstores facing each other like dueling opponents on the square. munro has none of that atmosphere. harper lee has not been eager to cooperate with munro in promoting to kill a mockingbird or her personal history. some of the events last year's included her threatening to sue the little historical society there. she is not anxious to be back in

the limelight which raises the question of, why now? >> let's jump right a head to watchmen. we will talk about later in the hour, watchmen is actually the book that when she left home and went up to new york to write, that is actually the book she wrote. >> backing for. >> mockingbird evolved during the editing process. the first book that she wrote, that she turned into her editors, but in the center of all this controversy because she was like i am back to publish another book. suddenly her sister, her longtime caretaker -- she becomes ill and there is a story of how this manuscript was miraculously found. >> i've been telling audiences for year that there is a second novel out there. if it were ever going to be published it would be published after her death. and though, here comes a book during her lifetime.

this is like attending your own funeral. [laughter] >> i think the creation story that it tells is sort of fabulous in the literal sense. she was going through, she was really taking over and was going through some things. it sounds sounds like some old papers perhaps a safety deposit book and comes across this manuscript with the go set a watchmen. and alice 20 years ago said it was stolen that's what it happened to the novel that harper lee was working on. a second novel supposedly. her sister alice said we had a break in break in and it was stolen. someone made off with it. someone made off with a ring the paper. no, that was deposited into the law offices of what were at one time barnett and lee. it had been there all that time, now that alice lee is gone, the

figurative skeleton key has been found. >> so what happened? do you think they wanted it published and when alice was not in charge anymore they decided to show to some people? >> there has always been, as is as is typical with all families, sibling competition there. alice was a very conservative woman, about 17 years older than her younger sister. as a result she saw herself as a surrogate parents. now was always extroverted and a little bit bohemian in her appearance and opinion. alice, for all of her life was the buffer between her younger sister of the world that was hungry to learn more about her. so so i have to think there is a

certain amount of joy in at last publishing the book that alice would never let her publish. >> why do you think she would not let her publish it. >> guest: there could be a number of reasons. i am playing mindreader here, the first reason could be that it was the first effort by young novelist and has the year mark of a young novelist. so harper assured assured us they have not edited this book at all. >> host: it seems sort of fantastic to me because it's manuscript and must back in time a little bit. she's in new york, a young writer, she's living in a cold water flat, friendly family and a slightly older couple gave her money to write for a year. then she writes turning in 50 or 70 pages every week or so. this is the manuscript that

becomes, go set out watchmen was the original title. >> guest: yes right. >> but they didn't even make an offer on that. >> guest: apparently not. i1 time she was telling people she was working on a novel called atticus. so you see any creative endeavor, particularly particularly when you are writing long form fiction things go through reiterations whether it is a working title, different take. i believe back "to kill a mockingbird" went through three different voices. first person, third person and what we get is a combination of the two, with jean louise in her 30s looking back and filling us in on things that a 9-year-old cannot have known. >> host: and you can see that, you can see the editing process. but to make it clear in the reiterations of the novel, the first thing that she turned and was the adult scout looking back

she is come back home, it was set in contemporary times that which would've been the 50s or 60s. there is a civil-rights turmoil going on and she tells the story looking back. >> guest: it's a lazy way of getting into the story. she takes take the train home, she is back home in the south again. she reminisces with her father who is elderly now about those bygone days. but go set watchmen comes from a theme in mockingbird which is atticus outside of the courtroom. i i atticus is the watch car standing guard. >> host: so what the editing process which was extensive and took more than a year or so. >> guest: more than two. >> host: so there is a lot work that when it. what emerged was a story and it was the childhood scout, precocious and it has a nice

trick of sort of like mash was like the korean war but it was actually talk about the vietnam war. mockingbird is talking about the 1930s but what it was really talking about was the racial turmoil in the south of the 1950. that was the editing process. i was just fascinating and you can see this change you can see the voice is in third person that infers, this is for mockingbird. this is ostensibly 9-year-old, make him was an old town but it was a tired old town when i first knew it. and rainy weather the streets turned, the courthouse said to the square. somehow it was hotter than. a black dog suffered on the summers day, flies in the sweltering shade.

that is the adult jean louise. she is looking back and reminiscing. i just think this is straight from the original go set a watchmen. that voice i just didn't didn't quite catch it in the editing. whether they caught it or whether it serves the purpose is a coin toss. look at it this way, if you tell the story from the vantage point of a nine-year-old girl there is a lot of think she cannot possibly know or see. nine euros go to bed at eight o'clock. they are not going. they're not going to overhear the conversation and things like that. but if you can take an adult looking back, they add a bit of wisdom, hindsight and reassurance that all will be well. these children children get put into some dangerous circumstances with the mob, running through backyards that night, someone inspires a

shotgun over their head. with with jean louise grown up and coming back to reassure us that was the summer and that is when we met -- we get a sense that we're going to come out of this okay. there's a voiceover in the film, there's adult narration. >> yes, exactly. it's adult narration for film which is go set a watchmen. >> it's going to be interesting the story that emerges from this draft. >> i talked to wayne who is very close to harper lee, he's gone now. now. he grew up in that area. he said he always believe from what she told him that "to kill a mockingbird" was as he put it cobbled together from an earlier manuscript. also from freestanding short stories set in that time that made good chapters on the road. a typical one is a story of how jim lost his temper and broke all the hydrangeas in the front of the house.

when atticus found out about a he told him to go down there and read to her. do what she wanted. and she said i want to be read to. he does not know that she is trying to come off an addiction to morphine. he reads to her and eventually she passes away. that's a short story. you know what, it was just pulled out in the film because you can do it. it's a puzzle piece. >> it just fits in. so now we are back to the modern day in this manuscript we are discussing is sitting in the safe deposit box or something like that. i just never, a politely i don't know if i believe that creation. harper lee as she was quoted as saying was happy as hell it's been published. she had a very difficult time after mockingbird came out, she wanted to publish another book. >> issued it. >> she worked very hard.

no one has seen now she's locked up writing. so she wanted to write another book for a long time. so it seems incredible to me that here's go set a watchmen, a sql that to one of the most successful books in the american half-century at that point. it downs on nobody to go publish it were presented to anybody. as you and i discussed earlier there was no evidence of paying off her editor at the time. even a decade later, even contemplating publishing this. >> wright and her agent center receiving note a year after the publication, and all caps and said the mockingbird would like to have a new brother and sister. while the little brother and sister was available but as a working on something else you would certainly think the idea

was there particularly if she was struggling and she very clearly was, let's see what we can do that first thing you you turned in. let's have a sequel to that and maybe spruce it up a little bit. there is nothing out there and you would be the guy, did you ever hear of anybody or any evidence that they worked on that manuscript? after mockingbird came out? no. there's nothing nothing free-floating out there called the long goodbye, that could just be a working title of something. i don't know what that is. all i know there was a large manuscript called go set a watchmen and then there is mockingbird. so beyond that there seems to be nothing. there was an attempt of creating a nonfiction book in the 1980s. she squirreled her self away at her sister louisa's house and

she worked with the files of notorious case at alabama involving a reverent was the beneficiary of an insurance policy then he turned up dead. >> the congregation then joined. >> finally they just got fed up with the guy and at the six funeral i believe someone from chicago stood up from the congregation shot him dead. >> the law cannot achieve and they all went out the windows the local sheriff said the first time i ever heard of 300 witnesses and nobody saw anything but even that she worked on that. >> she did and she kept the files and they kept asking for them, but the files having been returned, there is every evidence that she was trying and trying.

and understand that her support system fell away, her team fell away. jimmy kinda of floated out to see with drugs and alcohol and became an undependable friend, jay was already in her 60s when she helped with "to kill a mockingbird". she retired from the business and brown's had other fish to fry so to speak. he was a broadway lyricist and they had family. >> these are people who sponsor. >> by the mid-19 70s there off the road and it is make or break time. >> and she was financially comfortable. >> sure. she had to live extremely simply. i was very surprised when i saw her house which is the most nondescript, one-story brick rancher, there's just nothing that you would suggest going down the street that you are looking for harper lee's

house, but it's very simple. so she has is very simple, straightforward life, it's not necessarily true that she's a recluse, she likes her friends and most the time she was living in new york. >> she is a provincial woman, she said i just want to be the jane austen of the south, meaning she wanted to write about a region and the people in that region. in her own life she kept very close to people she grew up with and went to church with. and in new york her circle is very small again, one time some friends came from alabama said were coming up from alabama would like to meet some authors and she said so what i. so capote had written and at one point i had no idea why she was up here now she loves

architecture, she became a hobbyist in terms of being able to point out when things were made in my that was different she was a baseball fan, i understand she a close female friend is in new york or whom she picked up for lunch and they would go to ball games together. when someone invited her to midtown manhattan she said i would never come down there is too wild, she is not living high on the hog. it was never about the money, this book, to kill a mockingbird is a tribute to to her father, sherry said it was a love story. this is about a great man in a small town in a much more powerful scene then when atticus loses the case. as he is packing up the briefcase and walking out, everybody in the gallery stands up. and they said stand up scout,

it's a wonderful line. i think that's a dad everybody really, really wants, he has been voted by moviegoers the number one hero. >> you can have your indiana jones and people like that. >> will come back to that in the second, he had atticus instincts. >> i very much like the conspiracy theory, when you go down there to try to meet harper lee it looks just like the little town of mississippi where i grew up in, it's a dead ringer. that is where i grew up. everything is the everything is the same until you mentioned two words, and i was your experience reporting down there that

everything changes normally are first question is, you're not from around here are you. so i had several strikes against me. i was an out-of-town or, is, is it yankee in this new. >> a boy, who needs you. yeah, we've seen your kind before. there is a remarkable thing that goes on and it goes everywhere, you don't know quite who you're talking to. the minute you ask one person, by the time you get to the second person everybody in town knows you are here and there is an agreement on whether people are going to talk to. >> there's another lady i talked to said well were all mixed up like being a butter. here i was talking to a gentleman on the square and another one walked up to me and it was almost prearranged, i was introduced to this man and he was a judge. so we go back to his chambers and he groomed me while i was in

town. on what i was expected to find. so there's a telegraph going on down there with the appointed by anyone to have that position or was he just asserting himself is like i'm sort of the unofficial gatekeeper here. exactly, i'm a gatekeeper. they have official that are pleasant and everything like that and then there is the enforcers exactly, bbc went down in a few years and went around with one of these and was enjoying and they ate together and a few elderly ladies passed out, after they were gone they said that was harper lee. pulled one over on them. >> but there's two interesting points about her relationship to that town, the second book and

then whether or not she likes manolo that much, if you notice in mockingbird, everybody has this fantastic opinion that it's this nice love letter to a small southern town. it's a love letter as you mentioned to her dad, it's noted in the book, virtually no adult other than atticus and maybe the sheriff at the ends is nice are decent, it's a town that wrongly convicts the black man and a mob comes to take care of them. it's terrifying. it's a town full of fallible human beings. and people wearing blinders. the church leaders are the biggest hypocrites in the town. they're helping people in africa but on the other side of the track there people who need help. dolphus had to pretend that he was a drunk and drinks out of the paper bag and nobody looks up that so it's funny and sad,

it's very bittersweet. so she writes this thing to this town and ends up being a huge success. it seems to me from the reporting that she went to new york and pretty much stayed there except to come home and visit family and friends. this is a horrible place and i got out of it. >> the town kind of has this thing where they are supposed to like her in she's a poster like them. i get the sense that it's a very touchy relationship. i don't think think she care for the town very much. i think she was glad to be gone. >> i need to come back to one earlier point to make clear that harper lee doesn't just critique that white people in town. she makes a clear that prejudice and fear runs in the human

blood. when the person that takes care of the kid, take them to the black church, woman plants herself in the way and says what are you doing here? there's a showdown about bringing these children into the church. so there's that kind of suspicion running on all sides. we have people who are affected by the circumstances. getting to new york, harper lee could not have written to kill him mockingbird unless she went to new york. because living in that town she had a limited perspective. when she gets to new york what did she see? look on the subway car, here the people with accents, here's people of different kinds of dress, people going to harlem to hear jazz. the very diverse environment and

one of the first stopping points from anyone coming from that side of the world. so she looks over her shoulder and what does she see? thomas set and its ways and is come to a comfort zone of ever changing things. of things things just bumping along the way they have always been. is that new perspective that allowed her to write this book. >> i think she would've been happy to stay away from the town. >> it was dallas who insisted she come back regularly because she disregarded as a family obligation and why should she be left holding the bag. >> because she was taken care of for mom and their mother had been on well. >> mr. lee shortly after the publication started to decline. so alice's argument and her nickname is a bear, ba are, i think that is well-chosen but she is tired of all the business

connected with family life and harper lee success. one of her sister came down to the shoulder the burden. their friends will tell you that once you're inside the curtain that we talked about, once you are in the in room, but outside of that alabama seem to me was also striking me as an affection for the book. it came out in 1960, how could the state how could she write the book but not be a change by. >> when he flying to the airport in montgomery you go right by there. all of the stuff that came right after that, the bombing of the birmingham church, it's a state that reveres the lessons in this book but did not learn from them. realize that tequila mockingbird

was not -- until 1984. >> you're making that up. >> notes true and i talked to the english teacher. she had to buy classroom copies. and i asked her, why was this not on earlier and she said because it offended too many people. is a controversial book in the 80s. >> so this would be one of the reasons perhaps why they didn't care for the overall town that much. them a plated that's very popular. >> it's a license to be an amateur production. he wants it on broadway. >> but you have the set behind the courthouse. >> right. i was on the jury and i said i vote to acquit. >> so you can see worse that i wrote this story about how unpleasant this town can be and

now you're turning around and acting like you love it so much. you can see why that might take her off a little bit. >> yes. good friends of hers have said that she wants the characters in the story to remain in the past and not appear on lunchboxes, not teachers remote or anything like that. she wants the integrity of the book respected. on one hand some high school kids painted a moral on the side of the building depicting the scene from "to kill a mockingbird". her thought was we thought it was well done and she called the graffiti. >> there are other stories round town where if she likes you she's pleasant but if she doesn't really care for you. >> she was at a christmas party one time and an out-of-town or came out and said i loved your book. now about atticus, she put her

book down and she called the book the bird. some people regarded as the bible, it isn't. >> again that incident with the museum that came up a few years ago, they were selling at the museum t-shirts with "to kill a mockingbird" and they did not have the copyright four. when she asserted the right to her copyright they were the ones who objected. >> easy relationship. 25,000 people a year come to munro just walked the streets. the town benefits, all cafés and everything, they are all selling lemonade because of harper lee and to kill a mockingbird. >> when did that change? the book wasn't sold or wasn't taught in schools until the 1980s. when did it become a tourist attraction? >> i can't pinpoint it, but it

happened gradually, by increments the play helps to pull people in. it is something they can legitimately publicize. as i said they have not made steps to creating a boyhood home, the plaque went up saying that harper lee lived here. >> it's one of the most amazing literary friendships. in this town. >> was the population. >> 7500 or maybe less. >> that sounds about right. it's about 5000. i don't think it peaked at any point. like my little hometown, the

missile will war when the town was founded around 1823 it had it had about 300 people, half white, half black. i think you quote a union soldier who passed through at some point and called it the most poignant place on earth. by the time she was a kid at the end of world war i it still doesn't have paved streets. that would've been in the 19 thirties. but people love that lifestyle would not have it any other way. it is only as type a people who go down there find fault. they are perfectly comfortable. >> it's a very nice little town. until you really get into some of -- he gets contentious with this book i think. answer some of the stuff comes up. the south like the rest of the country still a very clear racial injustice. you'll see people who love mockingbird that there are also

fans of the confederate flag. >> is can say through a cosmic design has this book, that they're taking the confederate flag down? could it be better timed. >> i would be surprised if the flag actually comes down. i don't want want to go down that alley. i think the confluence of the supreme court decision on gay marriage and with the confederate flag, i'd be very surprised if that conservative bank of the south was willing to accept both the same summer. all of this comes into the society that she is in down there. she's uncomfortable with it. she comes back home more or less after she had a stroke. >> what was that? >> i return five or six years ago. my my understanding from one of her friends is that she was in the apartment alone having suffered a stroke for about two days.

>> it was in new york. >> yes, it may have happened on saturday morning, on monday morning some friends came back to pick her up, they knocked and she didn't come to the door and they got in and found her lying on the floor conscious but she had suffered a stroke. that was the moment the decision was made that you must come home. >> it's interesting, her friend coined the phrase that you need to come home even if it's in a box. >> she came home and he didn't. >> truman was always an unusual character in that town. >> he was. that creates art of the controversy around the book that she is diminished intellectually to some degree after the stroke. it sort of depends on who you talk to. >> don't take my word for it, alice, not long before she passed away said harper will find anything to please someone. that led to the copyright dilemma and controversy and she lost it to an unscrupulous

agent. which again would sorta go to sense alex was managing her affairs perhaps alex was not quite as sharp as she used to be. >> we had to dust off to over mockingbird next door. the author of that book was about to bring in outlook, and the protested and she pointed out they signed a release. they understood that she was interviewing them, no we didn't. >> this was an extraordinary access, she all but moved in with her. >> as a journalist she was highly ethical. she got the permission and they did not recall signing it. >> well alice did. i think alice was pretty clear that and that's why there is some controversy. nell said i never cooperated with this book and then alice was like well any kind got the

idea that they're not on the same page. the sisters were both getting older and they live together at that house where they have lived, we mention the house they live next door to capote. that's just off the square, 300 yards. then they moved out to a nice neighborhood with a one-story rancher. they lived there with their dad till he passed. that it was the two sisters there, when she she came home neither one of them ever married. so that was where they stayed, apparently had a lot of money, millions of dollars but lived very simply, side-by-side. and it's kinda like in life the past five or six years it all started to fracture, whatever was the intellectual capacity it just seemed to start, the center cannot hold anymore. >> i saw side of it when eyes working on on mockingbird with hop harper lee.

i have been at work for a year interviewing people who knew and doing research in all kinds of things and then i got a thing from alice lee saying i understand you wrote a book while my sister and i don't like it. i thought how could two ladies face each other of the table each morning how could nell not mentioned that she was talking with someone. apparently her sister did not know. >> after that when al sends you letter what happened next? >> i will go to the mailbox every day expecting a big fat envelope say -- but i tried to connect myself as a gentleman, tried to be discreet, i, i would explain to people what my reasons were. i thought this was a story that

needed to be told before everyone passed away who would remember it. nell's papers were not out file anywhere as you start up all dishes the boards. there wasn't much of a trail and i trying to get it down. to kill a mockingbird was the hottest in the 20th century in a story needed to be told. a lot of people bought that. they agreed to talk to me for those reasons but that some also said well i'm a very close friend and i knew you're going to call but i'm sorry can't talk to you. so i respected that. >> did anybody in the family help? >> yes, alice. when i started sending them things for their family history, their grandfather's application for civil war pension, things like that, anything at that they might like to have in their drawer for future generations. i got a lovely letter back saying you certainly have been doing

your research. when asked about her followers politics, how the transition happened from being a strict segregationist to be in an activist, to redistrict areas of alabama, when i asked her about that she said that her father was a very fair-minded man and he was up for the winds of change and his attitude was always the right solution should be the one we should go for. >> 's approaching nell did you attempt was through her agent. >> as she turned me away. her agent or me away, my agent tried to contact her. when i was down there one time a friend of her said we could drive by and she might be out. i said you know, i don't want the woman to think that i am hounding her. this is a small town and people will see that a stranger was going by slowly watching.

so i said just leave it. i was doing fine on my own. >> in the proverbial knocked on the door. >> you might've provoked her. >> as a biography i should be able to get the story. it's hard to live in america and not leave evidence of where you have been to school, who who you associate with them things like that. it wasn't difficult to find sorority sisters, people people who lived on her street in new york, it just took a lot of shoe leather. >> and as you mentioned delicacy. if word goes out and they tell everybody an and that town you would not be welcome. >> when i was reporting on the story earlier the sheer there's a number of doors i knocked on. the lights on cars in the driveway, nobody came to the

door. cards for people and they would not call you back. it was an unusual southern town in that regard. people usually when they don't want you on their front porch they will come and tell get off my porch. >> yes here was this wall of silence it was a very delicate notes on the piano to play to get people. >> they want to be known as an unfriendly place. they have a play and and people do come down there. on the other hand, there could be dissension between people, she does have an extended family in her area through her sister and brother. louise married and had children, her elder brother had children as well. so the lee family is by no means gone from that part of alabama.

maintaining that kind of civility in a small town is critical. they are not going to betray each other for the sake of pleasing someone. >> particularly in that town the best you can have his be friends with harper lee. there is no higher social circle to sit in. i thought that's what you get a lot of people very unhappy with the lawyer down there. as we sort of discussed there's a theory and i'm interested in your point of view on this, that actually all of this change in the past year, the lawsuit against the museum, the book comes out, there's some other contentious things around town, actually what tonya carter is doing is exactly what her client is asking her to do. what has been removed as the offer of alice with the

stalwarts in the town. that she was the pleasant. when she went out of the way now she's flaky as you say. that actually what carter's doing is exactly what her client wants to do. nell is just tired of a lot of folks in the town and doesn't care people get upset about. >> i agree entirely. i think you hit it on the head. unfortunately ms. carter is being portrayed as the fall person, but i think she is taking direction from a woman who is up there in the years, doesn't have to be second-guessed anymore. and to have a little extra perk in her life and being on the map again. in the complicating factor is her mental state. the cost to did have stroke, she is intellectually diminished to some degree.

i talked to a number of people who have known her for 30 or 40 years they were in that circle and they said she came to this, there's a junior college that has a festival. she never came to it, is named for her. she had never come to it and she came one year. this person came back and said thanks so much for coming, it was just great and she said what are you talking about. so then she comes back to seem to reverse this lifelong opinion about i'm not going to publish anymore and then there is a miraculous story about a manuscript being found, very soon after her sister. >> within a few months of alice's death then now was suddenly happy to have it published again. there's millions of dollars on

the table and yet people have very legitimate concerns about whether now really understands what was going on. >> there's an evaluation of her capacity and she was found to be fine. it does raise issues of eldercare, elder law, that kind of thing, we've never been in a situation where second book has come out by someone will he or she is still alive that has this much importance. usually it's after the estate decides these kind of things. >> a number of hemingway books came out after his death. they were obviously lesser works >> i think there's some very honest questions and part of it for my point of view as a journalist and years as a buyer

for his that the publishing house, her agent they have all been closed mouth about it. at the publishing house editor set i've never seen this manuscript. i've never heard of this. so on this thing pops out with the story it seems almost incredible to me that i would have my skepticism about, the book was right here and i'm the attorney and i just umbel to cross it. here it it is i showed it to nell and she said let's publish this. i showed it to a few people and they liked it. i think we are very fortunate to have the book come out and particularly at this time, what wonderful timing. i hope it is very fine book.

it is going to address things that are still unresolved in american life. you know there is a private high school that is primarily white and an all-black public high school? so, believe me the streets are not paved in gold and that town or anywhere else in america. we have a have a lot of work to do. when a timely reminder to have this book come out this summer. if it's anything like to kill a mockingbird in terms of the voice, and sincerity, the issues it raises, we are all going to be so fortunate. i for one am going to be grateful. i hope reviewers give it a buy if it is not "to kill a mockingbird" because most of her life she would say to people, the reason i don't bring out another book is because once you been to the top of the mound there's only one way to get down.

just think she won the pulitzer prize with her first novel. what kind of pressure was on her to bring out another book? she had done very well. so she would be taking a risk and i hope reviewers would realize it was written 60 years ago when she was a woman in her 20s, and new york. >> and for the skepticism i raised, my theory is that you have to believe that this thing was miraculously found. it had been sitting there and somebody would be looking for this. if lee was happy as hell to have it published and it is clearly worth millions of dollars. what you might look for that sort of thing around the house. certainly i would. >> i will sure is the original manuscript because i've seen the cover page. it's type t