I’ll be there. As bookstores across the country, especially indie bookstores, celebrate the 5oth Anniversary of the book “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Schulers Books in the Eastwood Towne Center in Lansing Michigan is hosting a celebrity read tomorrow. I get to read some 16 pages from early in the book so I will be delving in to the part of the writing that provides background to the more dramatic portions of the book. Early in the book Scout, who is the child narrator, fills us in on her small Southern town and all its goings ons and trappings. Hopefully, the passages will roll off my tongue.

Southern writers, especially women, have often cited “To Kill a Mockingbird” as their inspirational muse. After rereading the book this summer it’[s easy to understand why.

I interviewed several mid-Michigan authors and a librarian this past week and basically started with the question of  why “Mockingbird” still has staying power 50 years after its publication. The article appeared in this week’s Lansing City Pulse and the story behind the story was revealed in a previous post on mittenlit.com

Randy Riley, a librarian at the Library of Michigan who is in charge of Special Collections and the Michigan Notable Book Award, told me about how his daughter had read the book last summer and how the trial scenes had captivated her. He also said that kids his daughter’s age (early teens) are attracted to the outsider Boo who in many ways turns out to be the hero in the end saving Jem and Scout from death.

At first blush the book can be tagged a simple and patronizing look at race relations in the Jim Crow South, but the book is much more complex than that. Harper Lee wanted the reader to explore our own feelings of right and wrong; heroes and villains and ultimately how we feel about the blurred gray of moral judgements we make everyday.

State Court of Appeals Judge William C. Whitbeck said the character of Atticus Finch comes up in legal discussions all the time and the ideas of a person wrongly convicted with a twist of moral ambiguity has become a cash cow for legal thriller writers such as John Grisham and Scott Turow.

He even points to Turow’s dramatic ending in “Presumed Innocent” when the heroic lawyer must admit that there may not be justice, but there is punishment.  Whitbeck’s own legal thriller “To Account for Murder” tackles similar issues of right and wrong.

“No villain is completely villainous,” Whitbeck said. And it goes without saying that no hero is completely heroic.

As Author James Seaton told me “At the end of the novel a white man is the murderer and he (Atticus) lets him off. “Boo is basically good-let’s forget about the guy he killed”. So who’s truly guilty and who’s truly innocent? The message isn’t so simple or is it? And that’s exactly what Lee may have had in mind 50 years ago.

You can make your own judgment on Sunday July 11 at Schulers Books at the Eastwood Towne Center when some 25 community members read from the book, “To Kill a Mockingbird” beginning at 11 a.m.