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You smile. It's nice to have another woman around to lessen the load. And a working woman, no less. A fellow writer. By the time you return to the table to rejoin the group, you can't believe the two of you just met, because it feels like you've known her forever. When Truman Capote arrived in Kansas, he couldn't have looked more out of place. Dressed in a sheepskin coat, long scarf and moccasins. Lee later recalled, those people had never seen anyone like Truman. He was like someone coming off the moon. His ego and his penchant for name dropping rubbed people the wrong way. Lee, on the other hand, was approachable. She quickly began earning the trust of wives around town, like Dolores Hope, whose husband was the lawyer for the victim's family, and Marie Dewey, who was married to the detective appointed to the case, Agent Alvin Dewey. Soon, Agent Dewey warmed to Lee, too. He recalled, she had a down home style, a friendly smile, and a knack for saying the right things. If Capote came on as something of a shocker, she was there to absorb the shock. Lee was also careful and diligent in her reporting, and her work became crucial as Capote decided to turn his New Yorker article into a full length book. She organized her observations into categories and drew timelines and diagrams to piece the story together. To help Capote recall a particular interview, she often wrote a little scene describing its setting. And she learned as many personal details about the family that had been killed as she could, even befriending local church ladies who gossiped with her. The details she gleaned, which she shared with Capote, eventually helped him paint a rich portrait of each character in the book he would call In Cold Blood. Back in New York In March of 1960, Mockingbird was almost ready to hit shelves when Lee learned that Reader's Digest and the Literary Guild had selected it as the book of the month to offer their subscribers. This meant it would instantly be promoted to thousands of people. Lee was so overjoyed at the Literary Guild's rave review that she got a jaywalking ticket, racing downtown to her agent's office to celebrate. Then, In July of 1960, Mockingbird was finally published and quickly hit the New York Times and Chicago Tribune top 10 bestseller lists. The New York Times Review called Lee a fresh writer with something significant to say. Then, within just six months of Mockingbird's publication, Lee had signed a deal with a Hollywood production company to turn it into a movie. And then, after 41 weeks on the bestseller list, it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction writing. Lee was thrilled, but she wrote to a friend. The Pulitzer is one thing. The approval of my own people is the only literary reward I covet. As soon as she got word of the award, she phoned her sister Alice, hoping to take the pulse of reactions in Monroeville. But she needn't have worried. The county paper summed up the positive. What happens in a small Southern town when citizens learn that one of its natives has just become A Pulitzer Prize winner. Well, the word travels fast. Telephones ring, bulletins go on the radio. People jump in their automobiles and travel to the next block to tell their neighbors. There was no question Monroeville and people who love Lee are proud of her and her work. Requests for interviews and letters from fans poured into Lee's mailbox. Truman Capote wrote to friends, poor thing. She says she gave up trying to answer her fan mail when she received 62 letters in one day. But though Capote thrived in the spotlight, Lee felt overwhelmed by the sudden rush of attention. She didn't like talking to the press and kept her responses curt to field requests and manage her business affairs. Lee increasingly turned to her sister, Alice. Alice Lee was 15 years older than Nell, and as a trained lawyer, she became her sister's de facto advisor and manager. It was Alice who, at the end of 1963, crunched the numbers on her sister's finances to find that much of Lee's earnings would have to go toward tax. Both sisters were shocked. Suddenly, Lee felt she was suffering from the consequences of success. The fame, the publicity demands, the taxes, but not enjoying the fruits of it. She told the Associated Press, success has had a very bad effect on me. I'm running just as scared as before. What's more, while Mockingbird was widely praised, its message of racial injustice sparked controversy. At the time of publication, the country was embroiled in the largest civil rights movement in US history. That year, 1960, had seen the famous lunch counter sit in in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the forced integration of New Orleans elementary schools. And To Kill a Mockingbird explored race relations in the American south head on. Lee painted a harsh picture of racial injustice, and the novel seemed to instruct white Southerners to reject racist views. But the book's message had its enemies. Just days after Mockingbird was awarded paperback in the the year in 1962, Alabama Governor George Wallace took to the state capitol steps and declared segregation now. Segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. By 1964, two years after the publication of Mockingbird, Lee had only written a few more short articles. But she assured a reporter that she was still hard at work on her next novel. She told him, I would like to be the chronicler of something I think is going down the drain very swiftly, and that is small town, middle class Southern life. In fact, Lee said she hoped to become the Jane Austen of South Alabama. But Lee was struggling under the weight of the public's expectations. All anyone wanted to know was when her next novel would come out and what it would be about. Lee felt pressure to write something that could live up to the success of Mockingbird, telling her cousin, I haven't anywhere to go but down. In the meantime, Mockingbird continued to spark debates about race. In 1966, a school board in Richmond, Virginia, voted to ban the book from the curriculum, calling it immoral. Instantly, community members filled the op ed pages of the local newspaper to debate the ban. One librarian was supportive, declaring, it's gratifying to know that the Hanover county school board has taken a firm stand against slummy books. But another reader countered, to ban a book is to plant the seeds of narrow mindedness. Eventually, the school board backtracked and the book was allowed back onto the shelves. But it was hardly the last time Lee would encounter resistance to her book's message of racial justice. In January 1966, as Nell Lee struggled to handle her success, Truman Capote finally published his book In Cold Blood. It was hailed as a major journalistic feat, the first ever non fiction novel. The New York Times praised the immense courage it must have taken to follow the story through and write it down and called the book reportage in a depth we have not seen before. But when Nell Lee opened her copy of the book, she was shocked by what she found. The only credit for her contributions was in the form of a dedication written to both her and Capote's romantic partner. Lee and Capote's friendship had been strained for some time. Capote's cousin attested that Capote was envious of Lee's Pulitzer win and even resented her for it. He'd also been increasingly using drugs and alcohol to numb the stress that came with his work. When Capote hosted a black and white masked ball at the Plaza Hotel that autumn, he chose to invite over 500 friends, but his oldest, Nell Lee, would not attend. By 1977, over a decade after the In Cold Blood snub, Harper Lee had still not given up her dream of writing another novel. And one day she opened up the newspaper and saw a story that jumped off the page. It was a strange case involving a series of murders about 100 miles from Monroeville in Alexander City, Alabama, she saw an opportunity to write her own version of In Cold Blood. So, like she had for Capote a decade before, she packed up her life and went to live in Alexander City, committed to writing a true crime novel of her own. Lee was now in her 50s, but her mind for reporting was as sharp as it had been nearly two decades before. In Kansas, she collected a paper trail of records and traveled from county to county, interviewing anyone with A stake in the story. She even came up with a title for her new book, the Reverend. But when she returned to New York and sat down to write, nothing came. She struggled to structure the story and mulled over the ethical questions of covering true crime. She suffered under the pressure of what she called her neck being breathed on to churn out as high quality a book. As Mockingbird, rumors swirled about her progress. But years passed with no publication and no public statement from Lee. By Mockingbird's 30th anniversary in 1990, a newspaper reporter wrote that Lee had vanished from the literary landscape, becoming nearly as enigmatic as Boo Radley, her novels forbidding Recluse Lee was fading away, and not just from public view. One of her key sources for the Reverend said it was his impression that Lee was fighting a battle between the book and a bottle of scotch. And the scotch was winning. Her sister Alice, too, had expressed concerns about Nell's drinking habits throughout her life. Lee's personal circle was also shrinking. Her father and brother had died decades before. By the early 1980s, her editor, Tay Hohoff, had also passed away. In 1984, Capote died, too. Despite their disagreements over in cold blood, it was another blow for Lee, who still considered Capote a close friend. Meanwhile, Lee's masterpiece, Mockingbird continued to soar to new heights. It was voted best novel of the century by a Library Journal poll in 1998, and it had become a classic of American literature. But the years of trying to replicate her success had come with a heavy cost. In June of 2007, Harper Lee failed to show up for a lunch date with some friends in New York. Later, they found her lying on the floor in her apartment, having suffered a severe stroke. Lee recovered, but the stroke left her in a wheelchair and struggling with her vision and hearing. Lee and her sister Alice decided to move back to Monroeville for good. Lee had been splitting her time between New York and Alabama for years. Even at the height of Mockingbird's press tour, she'd been shuffling back and forth to visit her father as his health declined. Local residents might see her shopping at the Dollar General, feeding ducks by the pond, or sipping sweet tea at David's Catfish House with her sister. Though Lee was known to reject interview requests with an emphatic hell no. She was friendly to her neighbors. But in Monroeville, as elsewhere, she wanted little to do with Mockingbird's fame. She used to sign copies of the book for local bookstores to sell until she realized customers were turning around and reselling them at a huge markup. But Lee and her sister Alice had grown close to one Chicago Tribune reporter named Marja Mills. They even helped her rent a house near theirs and granted her permission to write a book about their lives. Around this time, Alice Lee had also been training a young lawyer, Tanya B. Carter, to join her practice. Carter was married to Truman Capote's cousin and had grown close to the family since the sisters moved back to Alabama. But soon, Carter's increasing influence began to draw attention. Imagine it's the fall of 2013. You're a nurse working at an assisted living residence in Monroeville. You're finishing up your typical morning rounds, changing bedding, delivering food to residents. You stop off in the staff room for a cup of coffee when another one of the nurses approaches you with a hushed tone.
