A journalist’s account of her friendship with Harper Lee is a masterclass in betrayal
Harper Lee, pictured in her father’s law office Photo: The LIFE Images Collection/Getty/Donald Uhrbrock
Marja Mills met Harper Lee in 2001 when she was commissioned by the Chicago Tribune to produce a feature on the reclusive author of To Kill a Mockingbird. She got along well with Lee's ninety year old sister, Alice, and Harper wasn't too rude to her, so Mills saw an invitation to move next door to them both and write a book about their private world.
The Mockingbird Next Door is a memoir of the seventeen months Mills spent in Monroeville, Alabama. It’s a slow town, mostly given over to the Mockingbird tourist industry, and not a great deal happened to Mills or Harper Lee in that time. It’s fair to say, in fact, that nothing happened, but Mills was never without her notepad. She and Lee went to Burger King, took some drives, and fed the ducks. Duckwise, "there was always a little something new to observe and talk over. A duck might have gone missing. Usually the duck in question would reappear."
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