To Kill a Mockingbird. Together they worked on Capote's masterpiece, In Cold Blood, but he became consumed by envy over Harper Lee's astounding success).

Rather than warmed-over gossip, what The Mockingbird Next Door does offer is a rich sense of the daily texture of the Lee sisters' lives. By the time she moved to Monroeville, Mills had been diagnosed with Lupus and was out on disability from the Chicago Tribune. Consequently, she entered easily into the world of the Lees and their "gray-haired crew" — all of them shared aching joints and free time to talk about books and local history, to go fishing and take long car rides into the country. Mills says she had to watch herself with Harper, who had more of an "edge" than herolder sister Alice. Whereas Harper could shut down a conversation with a frosty stare or a few choice cuss words, Alice comes off as gracious, grounded and principled. During her long legal career, she was a steady proponent of the Civil Rights Movement, prompting Harper Lee to refer to Alice admiringly as: "Atticus in a skirt."

The world that Mills was invited into over a decade ago has disappeared: both Alice (now 102) and Harper Lee (now 88) are in nursing homes, memories faded. Fortunately, in Mills, the sisters found a genteel family chronicler knocking at their door at the eleventh hour.

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Transcript

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

And now we have a book review for you. "To Kill A Mockingbird" was published in 1960 and immediately