MONROEVILLE, Ala — Harper Lee, famed author of To Kill a Mockingbird, just released her second novel, Go Set a Watchman, on Tuesday to record sales. Now, many close to the Monroeville native have expressed the belief that she has more stories to tell and as many as two full-length novels stored away.
In a column in the Wall-Street Journal, Lee’s attorney Tonja Carter speculated that she might have seen a glimpse of a third work. “What of the other pages that have for decades sat in the Lord & Taylor box on top of ‘Watchman’?” She wrote. “Was it an earlier draft of ‘Watchman,’ or of ‘Mockingbird,’ or even, as early correspondence indicates it might be, a third book bridging the two?”
Wayne Flynt, family friend and history professor at Auburn University, spoke to CNN about the manuscript mentioned by Carter. “Her sister, Louise Conner, told me and my wife that she (Lee) finished the novel sitting at her dining room table in Eufaula, Alabama. Louise said she read it and it was far better than ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ or [Truman Capote’s] ‘In Cold Blood,’ ” he said. “Somewhere out there at least one person, her sister, says there was a book far superior to either one of those classic books.”
But the real question surrounding these works is not necessarily that they exist, but whether or not the public will ever get to see them. No one knows for sure and Flynt says he has never spoken to Lee about the possibility of a fourth book—not wanting to intrude on the author’s privacy.
CNN’s sources say Lee has worked extensively on one project and has even given it a name: The Reverend. Flynt, conveying information from Lee’s now deceased sister, claims the new story chronicles the true-life events of Rev. Willie Maxwell, who was suspected in the deaths of various relatives.
Lee reportedly even went so far as to interview a doctor about poisons to find out which could cause someone to die but not be found in an autopsy. Flynt says he knows about the conversation because he spoke to the doctor.
“Could we go from a one-book author that everyone assumed would never write anything else, to a four-book author?” Flynt said.
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