NORTH ATTLEBORO

For Charles Shields, Harper Lee's novel "To Kill A Mockingbird" presented a "great literary mystery."

What was the inspiration for the story? Were the characters based on Harper Lee's real life friends and family? And why didn't another book follow after the publication of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a young girl growing up in the south?

Shields, who set out to answer those questions in his biography, "Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee," spoke about his efforts to unravel those mysteries to a group of about 100 readers in a seminar Tuesday hosted by Richards Memorial Library and the Big Read of Eastern Massachusetts. The seminar was the main event in the townwide read of "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Though Lee, 82, is still alive and living in Alabama today, finding her life story proved to be challenge since she has not given an interview for 43 years. "There was precious little to know about the woman. Pick up any encyclopaedia and they start out the same. Nelle Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Ala where her father A.C. Lee was an attorney. After that they start giving conflicting information," Shields explained.

Dispelling several commonly recited myths, Shields said Lee never received her law degree, dropping out of college in her final quarter, and she is not a descendant of Robert E. Lee.

After dropping out of college, Lee moved to New York City, where she worked odd jobs for almost 10 years while writing on a desk made from her closet door. She never published anything until "To Kill A Mockingbird" was released, however.

"She was afraid of failure because there was so much on the line," Shields said. "She didn't want to find out that she didn't have it."

Lee followed the old advice of "write what you know" and turned out her novel, set in a fictional Alabama town that resembled her own. Populating the novel were characters like Atticus Finch, Boo Radley, Calpurnia, Jem Finch and Dill, who were based on real people in her life - as was the novel's narrator Scout, who was based upon Lee herself, Shields said.

"Scout was Harper Lee. She was the overall wearing, stomach punching little girl who was hanging from trees and precocious in school," Shields said. "From the time she was small until today, she was always a nonconformist. She never sought anyone's approval."

Lee rewrote the book three times before it was published and hoped for "a merciful death at the hands of the reviewers," Shields said. Instead, the book became a best-selling novel and the subject of an Academy award winning movie.

"It's a very good story with a great voice behind it," Shields said. "I know people who read it once a year as a treat to themselves. It's a novel about two human challenges - justice and getting along with people who are different from us."

Shields said Lee did not like the attention and quietly withdrew from the spotlight.

"There is nothing reclusive or strange about Miss Lee. She is a Southern lady who covers up her chrysanthemums when it gets cold outside," Shields said. "Harper Lee discovered something - she did not like being famous. She didn't like the endless questions about her book and the inevitable question about when we could expect another novel." While there are rumors that Lee has completed a second novel, Shields said it likely wouldn't be published until after her death. He also suggested that a book of correspondence, based upon drawers full of letters collected by family and friends might also be published one day. Whether either of those books will ever make it to print will have to remain a mystery for now.

AMY DeMELIA can be reached at 508-236-0334 or at ademelia@thesunchronicle.com.