One of 20th century litera ture’s great unsolved myste ries is why Harper Lee, au thor of the universally admired and hugely influen tial novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” never published a second novel.
Lee hasn’t given an interview in 45 years, and even her 99-year-old sister (still practicing as a lawyer) only hazards a guess in Mary Murphy’s old-school documentary: Her younger sister had nothing to prove, and nowhere to go but down after her astonishing debut novel.
Many novelists, a few celebrities (Oprah Winfrey, Tom Brokaw) and a civil rights leader (Andrew Young) praise Lee’s novel, as well as the superlative film adaptation starring Gregory Peck.
The most fascinating interview, though, is with an elderly Greenwich Village couple who were asked by a writer in Alabama, Truman Capote, to look after Lee, Capote’s next-door neighbor as a child.
The couple became so convinced of her literary talent that, as a Christmas present, they paid Lee to take a year off from her job — as an airline reservation clerk — to write the book that became an enduring masterpiece after it was published 50 years ago, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”