The newly discovered sequel to Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winner novel To Kill a Mockingbird titled Go Set a Watchman will be published this summer by William Heinemann, the UK publisher of To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee penned the sequel which features Scout as a grown-up back in the 1950s, but the unpublished work had been lost until recently.
In 2014 Tonja Carter found it and now readers of Lee’s iconic novel will have the opportunity to catch up with Scout and Atticus years after the events that unfolded in To Kill a Mockingbird.
“In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called Go Set a Watchman,” said Lee in a statement released by William Heinemann and Penguin Random House. “It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel from the point of view of the young Scout.
I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn’t realized it had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought and hesitation I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.”
“To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most important and enduring books on the Penguin Random House lists and it is no surprise that time and again it is voted best loved by both the reading public and by educators,” stated CEO of Penguin Random House Tom Weldon. “The story of this first book – both parent to To Kill a Mockingbird and rather wonderfully acting as its sequel – is fascinating. The publication of Go Set a Watchman will be a major event and millions of fans around the world will have the chance to reacquaint themselves with Scout, her father Atticus and the prejudices and claustrophobia of that small town in Alabama Harper Lee conjures so brilliantly.”
The Plot:
Go Set a Watchman is set during the mid-1950s and features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father Atticus. She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand both her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood.
