First chapter of Lee's Mockingbird sequel published

We know this much so far about Harper Lee's new book: Atticus Finch is 72 and suffering from rheumatoid arthritis; Scout is a grown woman who has a suitor most anxious to marry her.

And Scout's older brother, Jem, apparently has died.

Go Set a Watchman begins with Scout, otherwise known as Jean Louise Finch, returning by train to Lee's legendary Maycomb, Alabama, on one of several annual visits she makes from New York, where she is greeted by young Henry Clinton. The first chapter ran in Friday's editions of The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.

Go Set a Watchman, the most unexpected second novel in memory, is coming out on Tuesday. It takes place in the 1950s, 20 years after the setting for To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning book. US publisher HarperCollins has said that preorders for Go Set a Watchman are the highest in company history, and bookstores worldwide are planning events to celebrate the book's release.

Anticipation and apprehension have surrounded news of Watchman since it was announced in February. The surprise and happiness of a new work from Lee have been shadowed by suspicions the book doesn't measure up to Mockingbird and was approved without the 89-year-old author's full awareness.

Lee has poor hearing and vision and resides in an assisted-living facility in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. But her lawyer, Tonja Carter; literary agent, Andrew Nurnberg; and publisher have insisted she is delighted the book is coming out. State officials, responding to at least one complaint of possible elder abuse, determined she was alert and capable of deciding on the release of Watchman.

To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, is set in the 1930s in the fictional town of Maycomb and introduced Atticus Finch, Scout, Boo Radley and other beloved literary characters. The book was adapted into an Oscar-winning movie starring Gregory Peck as Atticus.

According to HarperCollins, Carter came upon the Watchman manuscript at a "secure location where it had been affixed to an original typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird". The new book, which Harper has said did not undergo any new revisions, is set in Maycomb during a time when the civil rights movement was taking hold in Lee's home state. The US Supreme Court had ruled unanimously in 1954 that segregated schools were unconstitutional, and the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955 led to the yearlong Montgomery bus boycott.

(China Daily 07/11/2015 page8)