Harper Lee’s Go Watch a Watchman was a big hit — you may recall a bunch of the faculty lounge readers were publishing on it. I think Go Set a Watchman was actually a better book than To Kill a Mockingbird. The Land of Sweet Forever is this book. The “Cat’s Meow” (1957, or thereabouts), concerned with race relations, is set in Alabama during the 1950s.
I think there is a draft of the non-fiction book from the 1970s that the estate still holds. We’ll see….
Another story for Harper Lee, before she was in New York City:
Anyway, Sarah left the University under a thundercloud. Suspected: cheating, stealing, sneaking out of Calloway Hall at night, promiscuity, and an irreverent attitude toward the Dean of Women. Proven: one bottle of beer in her hand. Of course, she didn’t have to parade down University Avenue with it—that was rather indiscreet—but they shipped her for it.
When she was packing to leave, Sarah was in a fury, the main point of her discourse being that that mealy-mouthed Georgine Faircloth only got six weeks’ strict campus for being caught buck naked in a rowboat on the Black Warrior River, and here, she, Sarah Mitchell, was being expelled because her father hadn’t had his money as long as Georgine’s had had his. Besides, Georgine was a Beta Nu, and everybody who so much as pledged Beta Nu was assured of a free pass through the University, since the sorority was founded by Mrs. Jefferson Davis’s sister. Sarah had been rushed by the Beta Nus and was dropped like a hot brick the first time she opened her mouth, but if it hurt her nobody knew it. She just set about becoming the most independent student on the campus.
Two things — related to beer can. This is a stiff penalty. And I didn’t know that Mrs. Jefferson Davis’ sister was responsible for the setting of Bete Nu.