In the early 50s a young Southern writer, who had attended three colleges but received no degrees, was working as a reservations clerk for Eastern Air Lines and British Airways in New York City. The job left her little time to write, and she worried she'd never get around to completing her novel.

One Christmas, she received a remarkable gift from her friends: a year's wages. She refused the gift at first, sure they couldn't afford such generosity. But they insisted. With her talent and a year without distractions, they knew she would create something wonderful.

So she quit her job and went to work. 

Inspired by her father (who was a lawyer), the Scottsboro Boys trials (which accused nine black men of raping two white women) and the racial tensions running high at the time, she dove deep into the Southern psyche. 

Set at the end of the Great Depression, the story spanned three years in the childhood of a young Alabama girl, her older brother and their widowed father who happened to be a small-time attorney. Just as the writer's father.

The title of the book originated from an admonishment the father gave his children. "Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

In 1957, Harper Lee submitted the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, and began a two-year process of revisions. In 1960, Lippincott published it.

The book spent eighty weeks on the bestseller list. It also won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, making Lee the first woman to receive the prize since 1942.

And Atticus Finch, the quintessential father figure.