A day after she turned in the last section, on the last day of February, Crain sent it off to G. P. Putnam’s Sons, but an editor there rejected it a few weeks later. In April, Crain tried Harper & Brothers, but a month later they disagreed with his cover-letter claim that “Miss Lee” had written “an eye-opener for many northerners as to southern attitudes, and the reasons for them, in the segregation battle.” The day they declined, he sent the manuscript to J. B. Lippincott.
