It takes a great writer to put the right words on paper and influence the world, whether she meant to or not. It is a skilled writer's gift to make the characters come to life so much so that they become real to readers and are remembered for generations.
Harper Lee is one such writer. Her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was a brave and shocking reflection of the hypocrisy of the world and challenged the social norms of racism in her day.
It was, therefore, a moment of great literary discovery when a manuscript she had written in the 1950s came to light.
According to reports, the manuscript for Lee's lost novel, Go Set A Watchman, first resurfaced in 2011 when Justin Caldwell of Sotheby's auction house went to Alabama to appraise a manuscript of To Kill A Mockingbird, which was in the care of Lee's literary agent at the time, Samuel Pinkus, and her lawyer, Tonja B. Carter.
The discovered manuscript is a sequel of sorts about a now grownup Scout, the daughter of Atticus Finch, the epitome of racial heroism in American literature.
In 2014, the manuscript for Watchman resurfaced again and was sent by Carter and Lee's current literary agent, Andrew Nurnberg, to HarperCollins for publication after years of being in the dark.
Lee herself couldn't be more happy that her long lost novel would finally be printed.
She told reporters back in February that she wrote Watchman even before she penned Mockingbird, which was originally just a story told through flashbacks from Scout's childhood. Her editor persuaded her to write a novel from the point of view of the child Scout instead.
"I was a first time writer so I did as I was told," she said. "I hadn't realized it had survived ... After much thought and hesitation I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years."
At 89 years old, Lee is ready to publish her second novel. We are certain that she will once again make literary history after more than half a century of introducing us to Scout and Atticus Finch in Mockingbird.
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