To say this is a book that everyone should read is really an understatement. I re-read it every few years to remind myself what truly great writing is like. There are so few truly great pieces of literature out there.
The one and only book written by Harper Lee, "To Kill a Mockingbird" won a great many accolades, including a Pulitzer Prize, but it's true beauty is that it holds up exceedingly well now, a half century later, in its depiction of ordinary people facing extraordinary choices. Proving, without a doubt, that the easy thing to do and the right thing to do are rarely the same.
And, it's not well known, but "To Kill a Mockingbird" is said to have inspired one of my favorite television shows. A show that I consider a true classic. The one hour drama "I'll Fly Away" featured a white Southern lawyer named Forrest Bedford, who was raising his three children with the help of his black maid, Lilly.
The creator of the show, David Chase, has only told the story of how he conceived the show a few times. He said that while watching the 1962 film version of "To Kill a Mockingbird", he was taken with the scene in which Atticus decides to leave his home and go to the jail to protect the newly convicted Tom Robinson. Atticus turns to his black maid, Capurnia, and simply asks her to watch the children while he's gone. Chase said, "This is an something that Atticus had probably done thousands of times -- asking his 'help' to watch the children -- but somehow that very action takes on much more signficance in the wake of Atticus' controversial interactions with the black community. This action got me to thinking about the relationship between Atticus an Capurnia and that's how I came up with "I'll Fly Away".
For more on the 50th anniversary of "To Kill a Mockingbird", check out an excellent piece produced for CBS' Sunday Morning at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/11/sunday/main6667444.shtml
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