Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

by Casey Cep

Enough water, like enough time, can make anything disappear.

the discriminatory actions of insurance companies not only depleted blacks of their current wealth but deprived future generations of the financial benefits burial insurance and life insurance provided for whites: a safety net, a leg up, an inheritance.

On the first day of May, Tom had defeated a poultry farmer from Alexander City and a lumberman from Daviston for a seat in the Alabama House of Representatives. Afterward, he and his campaign manager went down to celebrate on the Gulf Coast of Florida, which is where Radney was when he learned that the legislative seat he was supposed to occupy had been reapportioned out of existence.

Her own disciplines were less draconian: she liked to sleep late, start writing around noon, take a break for dinner, then carry on until deep into the night. She tended to write longhand first, and then, at the end of every day, she typed a fresh copy of her draft—“picking out the nut from the shell,” she called it—on the Olivetti typewriter she’d finally bought to replace her faithful old Royal.

Somewhere along the line, she stopped doing two things destructive to her own well-being. One was drinking; the other was writing.