Furious Hours, Casey Dep

I chose this book because of

interest in Harper Lee, who after writing ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, one of most seminal works of fiction in history, never published another book again. What happened? She spent years covering a true-crime story that the book lays out in detail. But the most interesting aspects was Casey’s coverage on Lee’s life which evolved around friendship, honor, loyalty, deception - her 50-year silence talking to media; her friendship w/ Truman Capote (they grew up right next door to one another in Alabama); how she helped him with the research for ‘In Cold Blood’; how he stopped communicating with her after that book was published (some speculate because he fabricated the facts of some of the book making nonfiction read more like fiction inventing dialogue, psychological speculation, etc.); how she never completed her book, ‘The Reverend’, about a minister who committed several murders and the book explains. Her ambitious project was undertaken in the prime of her life, and something she wholeheartedly mentioned to friends, spent time and money on the research, and altered the geography of her life to do the reporting. An unfinished work that still to this day baffles everyone on why she didn’t complete it. Lee’s a complex character… and those are the ones I enjoy reading about.