‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Author Harper Lee Dies at 89

A follow-up of her classic tale “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “Go Set a Watchman” was a gift for her fans.

In this 2007 photo, the then US President George W. Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to American novelist Harper Lee in the White House. (Photo: Reuters)

Harper Lee, who wrote one of America’s most enduring literary classics, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” about a child’s view of right and wrong and waited 55 years to publish a second book with the same characters from a very different point of view, has died at the age of 89 on Friday.

Multiple sources in Lee’s hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, confirmed the writer’s death.

For decades it was thought Lee would never follow up on “To Kill a Mockingbird” and the July 2015 publication of “Go Set a Watchman” was a surprising literary event - as well as a shock for devotees of “Mockingbird.”

Lee reportedly had written “Go Set a Watchman” first but, at the suggestion of a wise editor, set it aside to tell a tale of race in the South from a child’s point of view in the 1930s.