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Why Harper Lee Never Finished Writing Her True-Crime Book

WUNC | By Grant Holub-Moorman,
Frank Stasio
Published July 28, 2020 at 11:50 AM EDT
Image of Harper Lee at a desk.
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Harper Lee in her family's law office.
Donald Uhrbrock / The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
Image of mourners gathered outside of a chapel following a shooting at a funeral.
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Mourners gather in front of the House of Hutchinson Funeral Home after flee- ing the chapel where the Reverend Willie Maxwell was shot to death during the funeral of Shirley Ann Ellington.
Alexander City Outlook
Image of Harper Lee in Alabama in 1983.
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Harper, Alice, and Louise: the three Lee sisters together at the Alabama History and Heritage Festival in Eufaula in 1983.
The Eufala Tribune
Image of Nell Harper Lee at the University of Alabama.
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Nelle Harper Lee in the offices of the Rammer-Jammer during her time as a student at the University of Alabama.
The University of Alabama Special Libraries Collection
Image of national newspaper headlines about the Maxwell murders.
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National headlines from the murder of the accused Baptist Reverend Maxwell used voodoo as a derogatory association.
Casey Cep
Image of lawyer Tom Radney
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A young Tom Radney, at work in his law office.
Courtesy of the Radney family.

What lessons can the now-deceased Harper Lee teach a modern-day investigative journalist? Writer Casey Cep retraced Lee’s footsteps to a small town in Alabama to find out. She reopened a 1970s murder case that Lee had once obsessively followed: a rural preacher named Reverend Willie Maxwell who was accused of killing five of his family members for insurance money.

Cep implanted herself in Coosa County and set out to retrace Maxwell’s trial. Like Lee, Cep interviewed townspeople about the case, but she also sought out anecdotes about Harper Lee herself.

Image of author Casey Cep.
Credit Kathryn Shulz
Casey Cep is an investigative journalist and the author of "Furious Hours".

Who was the brilliant and private woman behind“To Kill A Mockingbird,” and what were her personal politics and literary ideals?

Host Frank Stasio talks with Casey Cep about her book “Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and The Last Trial of Harper Lee” (Knopf/ 2019) which contextualizes Maxwell’s trial with modern sensibilities and brings to light new information about Harper Lee and her miserable perfectionism.

Note: This program originally aired August 14, 2019.
 
Tags
Arts & Culture The State of ThingsCasey CepHarper LeeSouthern LiteratureTrue CrimeAlabamaMurder
Grant Holub-Moorman
Grant Holub-Moorman coordinates events and North Carolina outreach for WUNC, including a monthly trivia night. He is a founding member of Embodied and a former producer for The State of Things.
See stories by Grant Holub-Moorman
Frank Stasio
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
See stories by Frank Stasio
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