To Kill a Mockingbird—the twentieth century’s most widely read American novel—has sold thirty million copies and still sells a million yearly. Yet despite her book’s perennial popularity, its creator, Harper Lee, has become a somewhat mysterious figure. At the center of Shields’s book is the story of Lee’s struggle to create her novel, but her life contains many highlights—her girlhood as a tomboy in overalls in tiny Monroeville, Alabama: the murder trial that made her father’s reputation and inspired her great work: her journey to Kansas as Truman Capote’s ally and research assistant to help report the story of In Cold Blood.