Harper Lee
1926-2016
Harper Lee was an assistant to her childhood friend, the writer Truman Capote, when
she tried her hand at writing her own semi-autobiographical novel about
a girl growing up in the deep south and her relationship over the years with her
conservative attorney father. Lee's publisher's pointed to the chapter
in her childhood about her father defending a black man falsely accused
of raping a white woman, and said "That's the heart of the story. Focus
on that." It became To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the great works of American literature.
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