Mockingbird Songs: My Friendship with Harper Lee

Flynt (emeritus history, Auburn Univ., AL) is the author of 13 books on Southern history, politics, and religion. This volume, which celebrates his 20-plus year (which included a break of 12 years) friendship with (Nelle) Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, formed late in both of their lives, is largely an epistolary memoir. The historian and the novelist wrote to each other about friends and family, mutually shared interests such as Alabama history and literature, and matters of health. As their relationship progressed, so did the intertwining of their families. Flynt and his wife, Dartie, came to know Lee's sisters and nephew; their son named his daughter Harper, after the author. Flynt's discretion, as a friend and as the Baptist minister Lee trusted to speak at her memorial service, serves his friend well.