The Mockingbird Next Door by Marja Mills

As believable and as unlikely as this story is, it has become even more controversial following the disclosure of another possible novel by Harper Lee.  When Chicago decides to make To Kill a Mockingbird its city wide read in 2001, Mills, as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, travels to Monroeville, Alabama to gather background information never dreaming that she would actually get a chance to speak to the reclusive Harper Lee.  She takes a chance and knocks in the door of the Lee house where she is greeted by Harper's (known as Nell in her hometown) ninety year old sister Alice on a break from her law office where she still practices. The right time? - the right attitude?- for whatever reason, she is invited in.  It turns out to be the beginning of a two year friendship with Mills eventually moving into the house next door.  Mills is suffering from lupus and maybe it is this shared fragility that invites the confidences of the hard of hearing Lee sisters.  Maybe Mills got it right and Alice thinks that it is time to "set the story straight" about the rumors of Nell's connection to Truman Capote, about why there was never a second novel, about many things.  Maybe the whole friend next door story isn't exactly as Mills tells it.  Fourteen years later, Alice is gone, Harper Lee can see and hear even less than she could in 2001 and maybe there is a second novel.  It seems that by providing this window into Lee's reclusive life, Mill has created even more mystery.