Free Republic

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously claimed, “There are no second acts in American lives,” but Harper Lee is out to prove him wrong. The beloved author will publish her second novel this summer. “Go Set a Watchman” was written more than 50 years ago — before her Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, “To Kill a Mockingbird” — but it was never published. In a statement released this morning, the 88-year-old author explained that when she was just starting off, she wrote “Go Set a Watchman” about a woman nicknamed Scout who returns home to Maycomb to visit her father, Atticus. After reading the...

To Kill a Mockingbird' will not be the reclusive author Harper Lee's only published book after all. Publisher Harper announced Tuesday that 'Go Set a Watchman,' a novel the Pulitzer Prize-winning author completed in the 1950s and put aside, will be released July 14. Rediscovered last fall, 'Go Set a Watchman' is essentially a sequel to 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' although it was finished earlier. The 304-page book will be Lee's second, and the first new work in more than 50 years. The publisher plans a first printing of 2 million copies. 'In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called...