To Kill a Mockingbird Town

"Top secret," Mr. X whispered to me toward the end of my stay in Monroeville, Alabama. "Nelle is in town." By then, though, I was in on the secret. Three other people had also mentioned Nelle sightings that day. Besides, I'd spotted the secret myself—having driven by a bank building and seen a thick-bodied woman with short, white hair dressed in slacks and a short-sleeve shirt help an older, wren-like woman out of the car and on to a walker. It was Harper Lee (whose first name is Nelle), author of To Kill a Mockingbird, dropping off her older sister, Alice finch Lee, at the office where she practices law. Monroeville, where Harper Lee grew up and where Truman Capote, her childhood friend, spent summers, is the self-proclaimed literary capital of Alabama.