Looking for traces of 'Mockingbird' in Harper Lee's hometown - Naples Herald
(AP) — Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” is always nearby in the southwest Alabama town of Monroeville. The quiet city is the birthplace and current home of the 89-year-old author, and it inspired the fictional town of Maycomb in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book about race and injustice in the Deep South of the 1930s. And with the “Mockingbird”... But all those things are based on the book, not part of it. There are other spots around town that actually helped make “Mockingbird,” released 55 years ago. Start at Mel’s Dairy Dream on South Alabama Avenue, a busy main road in the town of 6,300 people, and walk north toward the square. The small block restaurant, ringed by service windows and a counter where customers plop down money for ice cream cones, stands on the site of Lee’s childhood home, which was torn down decades ago. Mel’s is just a short walk from the school where Lee attended classes and, by extension, her alter-ego Scout and Jem began their “longest journey together” at the book’s climax. Lee shared the old house with siblings, her mother and father A. C. Lee, an attorney and Alabama legislator who was the basis for Atticus Finch. Source: naplesherald.com
