Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill A Mockingbird is a beloved work of American literature, but much of Lee’s life has been shrouded in mystery. While reporting on Go Set a Watchman for The New Yorker, writer Casey Cep discovered a mystery of her own: Lee had tried in vain to write another book in the years following the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird.
The purported work-in-progress was based on the true-crime story surrounding Reverend Willie Maxwell. Reverend Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years, until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted, thanks to the help of the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.
Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing a novel similar to In Cold Blood, which she had helped her friend Truman Capote write many years earlier. According to Cep’s research, Lee spent many years working on the novel, but it never came to fruition.
In Furious Hours, Casey Cep attempts to bring the story to life herself, exploring the shocking murders, the courtroom drama, and racial politics of the Deep South, and offering an intriguing portrait of Harper Lee and her struggle with fame, success, and creativity.
Publisher: Knopf (May 7, 2019)
About the Author
Casey Cep is a writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in English, she earned an M.Phil in theology at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New Republic, among other publications. Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee is her first book.