Abby Rosebrock

In his recent biography of the reclusive novelist Nelle Harper Lee , author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Charles J. Shields manages to compile a reasonably thorough portrait of his subject using what few resources he was able to dig up. Titled Mockingbird, the biography contains few, if any, incisive revelations concerning Lee's personality or place in literary history, but the book nonetheless serves as a straightforward, coherent, and practical assemblage of most available information about her life and work.