It would be a mistake to read Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” as a sequel to her 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Yes, it takes place a generation after the earlier book, involving a visit from Scout Finch – now 26 and using her given name, Jean Louise – to her hometown of Maycomb, Ala., from New York, where she has gone to live. Yes, Maycomb has changed: Scout’s older brother Jem, we learn in the opening chapter, is dead, victim of a congenitally disordered heart, and her father, Atticus, has not only grown old but also darker and more compromised.