I almost didn't read this book. i'm someone who so loves Harper Lee's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD that it made me awfully nervous thinking about "the lost book". Thinking that some people have one book in them. If we're lucky, it's one fabulous book.

I have educated myself over the years, and I am far more critical of the book I loved when I first read it, and was over the moon. I saw the film before ever reading the book. The novel was published in 1960, the film released in 1962. My memory is that my family went and saw it at a drive-in on Cape Cod, in the summer of '62. When I began reading the book, a year or two later, I heard Scout, in the voice of the film's narrator Kim Stanley, speaking the opening line.

I know the story is flawed. It is, once again, a white perspective on the American South, racism, history,bigotry. Tom Robinson and Calpurnia are essential to the story, but ask most of us about TKAM and we'll talk about Atticus.

I don't think quite that way. For me, from the opening ilnes, the opening scene, the first chapter, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is Scout's story. Not only because she is the narrator, but it was always about Scout to me. A little girl, trying to understand her culture and society, knowng that she really didn't fit in. While we had pretty much nothing in common but our gender, I wholly identfied with Scout Finch. And with Mary Badham, who portrayed her brilliantly in the film. Some of that comes from the knowledge that the actress is six months older than me.

Ask me about my favorite books, and I'll change my mind a lot, but two books stay on the list, set in concrete: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and A WRINKLE IN TIME. Meg Murry is 12 years old in the latter book, which was published in 1962. I was never Meg in so many ways, but like so many of you reading this, I imagine, you too were "the smart girl" and that made for well, problems? Concerns? Issues? when we were young.

Followed Harper Lee's career, blah blah blah, courtoom scene reenacted, Stu and I saw a stage play of TKAM at Seattle's Intiman Theatre in 2007. Read MOCKINGBIRD and THE MOCKINGBIRD NEXT DOOR. Have the tote bag. Okay? Fan girl.

When news of GO SET A WATCHMAN came to my attention, I was thrilled. I wanted to read, basically, anything Harper Lee had written. I knew there were, shall we say, "issues" regarding this book/manuscript. There still are and always will be because we're not there, we were never there, we don't know if Harper Lee's sister Alice was protecting her sister or defending her or keeping her from doing what she wanted or...or...or. We do not know and the opportunity to find out is gone.

So a couple of early reviews left me dismayed at the very least. Sweaty-palmed. The loud bold news was that "Atticus is a racist!" Atticus is evil. Atticus was a bad man. Atticus is showing his true Southern roots. We've all been fooled and cheated.

No. Not me. Or if I'm supposed to feel fooled and cheated, I don't fucking care. Not really. Not very much at all. I read GO SET A WATCHMAN last week. I will read it again.

Harper Lee always wrote about Scout, about Jean Louise Finch, a litle girl who adored her wondeful and apparently perfect father, but who never fit in to her rural Alabama society. Set twenty years after TKAM, which took place in the 1930s. this "not a prequel" story has Scout visiting Maycomb from New York. She lives there. Harper Lee did live in New York, a fact which surprised me, given that I felt she probably always lived in the South. Not true. Harper Lee may never have tromped around in overalls, but she was aware of not fitting in in her town in Alabama.

There are some massively clunky passages in GO SET A WATCHMAN, which might have been excised by a more careful editor. Dr. Finch does go on a mite too long with the historical and literary refences that mean nothing to me. It reminds me of books set in England where every schoolchild, it would seem, memorizes hundreds of literary quotes to sprinkle into conversation and to use to solve those fiendishly difficult acrostic puzzles.

Scout's diatribe against her father near the end of the book is a bit too perfect. She never stumbles, she is fabulously screamingly articulate. But then, that is a reflection of how she was raised. And putting in every stumble, hesitation, um and er would not work. I know that.

In this story, a daughter feels betrayed by someone who was, for 26 years, a perfect parent. She finds out - and we learn at the same time - that Atticus is not perfect, is anything but. He is a snob and exemplifies Southern 1950s bigotry without thinking. He considers himself superior, and he does believe in the rule of law. But he knows, by god, that the "Negro" is part of a backwards race and we are not meant to mix and mingle. Jean Louise, who sat in the "colored balcony" at the courthouse to hear her father defend Tom Robinson saw the best in her father, saw him defend what she has grown up believing. To learn that he does not believe is a catastrophic loss.

It's about Scout. At least, to me it is. It is not about St. Atticus Finch (and those brilliant courroom scenes, and his erudition, his deep feelings, his passion as it shows there.) It's about Jean Louise Finch learning that her father is flawed, is human and is a hypocrite.

Many of us know that wrenching feeling, the one that says "your role model is flawed, is wrong, is not what you thought". I imagine many of you reading this knows that feeling regarding a parent, a teacher, a mentor, a role model. I have, over the years, had to quit reading books about people I admire when it turns out they were schmucks. It's dishonest of me, maybe, but I want to preserve the respect I have for what they do well. It's hiding. Yep. I get to hide.

It's about Scout. And while GO SET A WATCHMAN is a distinctly lesser book, without the brilliance of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, it tells, for me a true story. And it's written beautifully. A major reason I always wished for more books from Harper Lee is that I love her way with words. I want to read more of her work because she writes in a way that really works, really matters for me.

I will read GO SET A WATCHMAN again. And probably again. It worked for me and did not disappoint. It did not wreck the image of Atticus Finch for me. I kept thinking of all of those holier-than-thou conservatives who used to lecture me about my left-wing politics, my liberalism, telling me I was naive and that I'd grow out of it. Many, many people grow conservative as they grow older. I did not. I went way farther to the left and have stayed there. Atticus Finch adjusted to his time and place. His daughter never could. She grew up, attended college, got out. I apologize for the trite phrase but well, I related to that. i have in many many ways felt out of place in my life, finding that I was not comfortable with the expectations I faced. Many of us know that one.

I do not feel betrayed by the fall of Atticus Finch. I do not feel like I've lost a hero. Atticus still did what he did where he did it best, in the courtroom. But for me, it's all about Miss Jean Louise. Scout Finch is the story.