Maycomb's Moral Mirror

Published in 1960 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the novel is set in Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930s. Young Scout Finch watches her father Atticus defend Tom Robinson, a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman named Mayella Ewell.

Harper Lee based Maycomb on her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, and Atticus on her own father, a lawyer who defended Black clients. The child narrator sees events without adult rationalizations, making the community's hypocrisy and cruelty impossible to ignore or excuse.