Harper Lee, now age eighty-eight and long out of the public eye, is the legendarily mysterious author of the iconic 1961 novel of southern racial injustice, To Kill a Mockingbird. It inspired an equally beloved film with Gregory Peck as heroic small town lawyer Atticus Finch, who defends an innocent black man accused of raping a white woman.
Lee unabashedly based the Finch character on her father, a revered small town attorney of impeccable integrity. Reputedly the closest clone of old Mr. Lee was Harper’s older sister, Alice Lee, sometimes called “Atticus in a skirt,” and herself an attorney since 1944 who became Alabama’s oldest female lawyer, practicing well into her nineties, wearing tennis shoes with suits. Alice, to whom Harper dedicated her book, along with their father, died earlier this month, age 103.
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