In 2015, the literary world basically exploded. People were lining up outside bookstores at midnight like it was a Harry Potter release, all because of one name: Harper Lee. After fifty-five years of silence, the woman who gave us To Kill a Mockingbird was suddenly dropping a new novel. Or was she?
The arrival of Harper Lee to Set a Watchman remains one of the most polarizing moments in modern publishing. It wasn’t just a book launch. It was a scandal, a heartbreak, and a massive payday all rolled into one. If you grew up idolizing Atticus Finch as the ultimate moral compass, this book likely felt like a punch to the gut.
Honestly, the "new" book wasn't actually new.
The Messy Truth Behind the Discovery
The story the publishers told was almost too perfect. They claimed Tonja Carter, Lee’s lawyer, stumbled upon the manuscript in a safe-deposit box, tucked away underneath an old copy of Mockingbird. It sounded like a miracle. But the timing felt... off. Harper Lee was 89. She was living in an assisted living facility in Monroeville, Alabama. She was increasingly deaf, nearly blind, and according to those close to her, struggling with memory issues.
Her protective older sister, Alice, had passed away just months before the announcement. Alice was the gatekeeper. With her gone, the gates swung wide open.
Wait, is it a sequel? No. Not really.
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Technically, Go Set a Watchman takes place twenty years after the events of the first book. Scout—now Jean Louise—is twenty-six and living in New York. She comes home to Maycomb to find her world has tilted on its axis. But here is the kicker: Harper Lee wrote Watchman before she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird.
When she first submitted the manuscript in the late 1950s, her editor, Tay Hohoff, saw something special in the childhood flashbacks but thought the adult plot was a mess. Hohoff told Lee to go back and write a book from the perspective of the little girl. That "revision" became the classic we read in high school. So, Watchman is effectively a rejected first draft that was rebranded as a sequel sixty years later.
Why the Atticus Controversy Still Stings
The biggest shocker for fans was the character assassination of Atticus Finch. In Mockingbird, he is the hero. He’s Gregory Peck standing tall against a lynch mob.
In Go Set a Watchman, Atticus is a seventy-two-year-old man with rheumatoid arthritis who attends Citizens' Council meetings. He opposes integration. He asks Jean Louise if she wants "Negroes by the carload" in their schools. It’s brutal. It’s ugly.
"I’ve killed you, Scout. I’ve deadened your conscience, and I’ve killed your spirit... I wanted to let you see him as a man."
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That’s a line from Uncle Jack in the book, and it basically summarizes the reader's experience. You’re forced to see a god as a flawed, prejudiced human being. Some critics argued this was actually a more "honest" depiction of a white Southern man in the 1950s. They felt it stripped away the "white savior" myth that Mockingbird helped build. Others felt it was a betrayal of a literary icon that should have stayed in the desk drawer.
A Literary Palimpsest
If you look at the two books together, they function like a palimpsest—one story written over another. Large chunks of prose are actually identical. You’ll find descriptions of Maycomb and specific character beats that Lee clearly copied and pasted from her Watchman draft into what became Mockingbird.
It’s fascinating for writers to see the "bones" of a masterpiece. You see her struggling with the same themes:
- The loss of innocence (done much better in the second book).
- The stifling expectations of Southern womanhood.
- The realization that your parents are not who you thought they were.
But as a standalone novel? It’s kind of clunky. The first hundred pages are mostly Jean Louise riding a train and thinking about how much Maycomb has changed. It lacks the tight narrative tension of the Tom Robinson trial. It feels like what it is: a draft.
The Ethics of the Money Grab
We have to talk about the money. Go Set a Watchman sold over 1.1 million copies in its first week alone. It was the most pre-ordered book in HarperCollins' history. While the publisher celebrated a "historic literary event," many in the industry were whispering about elder abuse.
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Did Nelle Harper Lee really want this out?
In the 1960s, she famously said she would never publish another book because she had said everything she wanted to say. She lived a quiet, private life. To have her "failed" draft pushed into the spotlight when she was too frail to defend it—or even read it—left a sour taste in many people's mouths. The state of Alabama even investigated the situation for potential financial exploitation, though they eventually closed the case, citing that Lee seemed "aware" of the publication.
How to Approach the Book Today
If you haven't read it yet, don't go in expecting To Kill a Mockingbird 2. You will be disappointed.
Instead, look at it as a historical artifact. It’s a window into the mind of a young Harper Lee trying to make sense of the civil rights movement in real-time. It’s a messy, angry book about a daughter’s disillusionment.
What to do if you’re curious about Harper Lee to Set a Watchman:
- Read it as a character study, not a sequel. Treat the Atticus in this book as an alternate-universe version of the hero you know.
- Compare the prose. If you’re a fan of the craft, mark the passages that appear in both books. It’s a masterclass in how a good editor (Tay Hohoff) can help an author find the "real" story hidden inside a draft.
- Check out the documentary Harper Lee: From Mockingbird to Watchman. It provides a lot of the context regarding her life in Monroeville during the release.
- Balance your perspective. Read Mockingbird first, wait a few months, and then dive into Watchman. Reading them back-to-back can be too jarring for the soul.
The legacy of Harper Lee is complicated. She gave us a book that defined American morality, and then, right before the end, her estate gave us a book that challenged it. Whether Watchman should have been published is a debate that will never end, but it exists now. It's part of the record. It reminds us that even our greatest heroes—and our greatest authors—are more complex than the legends we build around them.