Don’t miss tonight’s celebration at 5:30 in our Dot Com building! There will be a special reading by local author Howard Bahr, limited edition goodies, and $1 beer! You can purchase the book online here.

“To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. New York, NY: J. B. Lippincott, 1960.

In 1956, Nelle Harper Lee was writing short stories at night and on the weekends while working as a bookstore clerk and later as a ticket agent for an airline in New York City. Shortly thereafter, a literary agent read her stories, recognized her talent, and suggested Lee try the novel form as it would be easier to sell to a publisher.

Lee submitted the first fifty pages of a novel she titled “Go Set a Watchmen” to the editors at J. B. Lippincott in January of 1957. By this time, Lee had received financial support from friends and was writing full time and steadily submitting more of the novel. Atticus was already a “wise, learned and humane man,” and the character impressed her editors so much that the title of the novel was changed to “Atticus.” But as we know, this manuscript would not be published—it would not become the beloved classic “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The editors at Lippincott, who had not had a bestseller in years, sent Nelle Harper Lee back to her writing desk. Charles Shields notes in his book “Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee” that Lee’s lead editor, Theresa von Hohoff, made a commitment to nurture Lee’s abilities: “ . . . as I grew to know her better I came to believe that the cause lay in an innate humility and a deep respect for the writing. To put it another way, what she wanted with all her being, was to write—not merely to be a writer.”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” was released in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. “Mockingbird” was a young girl’s coming-of-age story written by an unknown woman set loose in a world of best-selling man’s fiction in the early 1960s: J.D. Salinger, Irving Stone, James A. Michener, Henry Miller, and John le Carré ruled the day. Famously, Flannery O’Connor called Lee’s novel “a child’s book” and remarked: “it’s interesting that all the folks that are buying it don’t know they’re reading a child’s book. Somebody ought to say what it is . . .” Well, we all have known exactly what kind of book “To Kill a Mockingbird” has always been. It’s a classic book full of life lessons for all ages; And children like Scout do have important things to say to us all.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” is one of the most coveted first editions for a collector, and its value has only increased over the years. J. B. Lippincott printed only 5,000 first editions. The first edition is clearly identified by a photograph of Harper Lee credited to Truman Capote on the back of the dust jacket. Later printings replaced the photo with praise for the novel. The book was not made well: the binding tends to loosen upon reading, and the dark red dust jacket rubs and chips easily. Signed copies are rare.

Written by Lisa Newman,  A version of this column was published in The Clarion-Ledger’s Sunday Mississippi Books page.

Click here to pre-order a copy of Go Set a Watchmen. Available Tuesday, July 14. 

We are thrilled to announce that our own Jackson native, Taylor Kitchings, has written his debut middle-grade novel, to be published AUGUST 18 by Wendy Lamb Books/Random House in the U.S. and Canada.

Set in Jackson in 1964, Yard War tells the story of 12-year-old Trip Westbrook and the summer that football and a forbidden friendship changed everything in his town.

Pre-order your signed copy here or call 601.366.7619, and be sure to join us for a signing on August 18 at 5:00!

By Jim Ewing                                                                                                                              Special to the Clarion Ledger 

Shannon Burke’s Into the Savage Country takes place in the western territories of the late 1820s with the clash of cultures of Britain, France, Spain, Russia and American Indian tribes, providing a gripping series of adventures.

William Wyeth, the protagonist, finds himself Out West having been disinherited by his father in Pennsylvania, and fighting the seeming curse laid upon him that he would never amount to anything for his inability to settle down into the civilized, farming life of his brothers. In this new world where he has found himself, he is at once confronted with prairies so wide, mountains so tall, vistas so broad, the silence so deafening it makes even the brashest of men seem small.

“I had come west to satisfy some restless craving, to sound the depths inside myself,” he reminisces. He finds that, and much more. Written in the form of a memoir, with accurate renditions of the clothing, speech and mannerisms of the mountain men, the citified dandies of St. Louis and various native tribes, Savage rings of authenticity as a historical novel should.

It skips across the more mundane aspects of frontier life, but zeroes in on key moments to make the tale hard to put down. The result is a portrait of life in all its hardship and monotony interspersed with mortal terror — not only at the hands of men, but by animals and the elements — along with brief moments of pure joy and abject awe.

Along the way, the reader matures as does Wyeth, coming to a greater understanding of the life of a trapper, seeing firsthand the rapidly changing landscape wrought by the influx of American settlers and the loss of the wildness of the continent.

The whole scope of the journey is shifted with this understanding, as the good and bad elements of “civilization” take their toll. Our pilgrim becomes transformed through the alchemy of the camaraderie of men, and how they change through hardship and association, their achievements, bonding and treachery.

And, of course, there is a woman. The Canadian half-breed Alene Chevalier is at once wild and wise, the daughter of a French trapper father and native mother, who knows more about life on the frontier than Wyeth can guess. He longs achingly and incessantly for her but risks the achievement of her love for this “restless craving” for adventure outside of the charms of her arms. Which allure proves stronger is a question that challenges and defines him.

Overall, Savage Country is a remarkable journey into the wild, untrammeled wilderness of a young man’s soul.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at The Clarion-Ledger, is the author of seven books including Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them, in stores now.