[This is an excerpt from the biography of the woman who wrote TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD – and nothing else the rest of her life. But she did start to write a book on the reverend which was never finished.]

The story revolves around W. M. "Willie Jo" Maxwell, a veteran of WWII, born and raised in east Alabama. During the mid-1970s, in addition to working in the wood pulp business, he did some preaching on the side in black churches in Alexander City and became known as the Reverend Maxwell. One night, Tom Radney, Sr., an attorney and former state senator, received a call from Maxwell. "You've got to come out here to my home," Maxwell pleaded, "the police are saying I killed my wife." Mrs. Maxwell had been found tied to a tree about a mile outside of town and murdered.

Books about the Civil War are legion. When I was young, Bruce Catton published a 3 volume history of the Army of the Potomac which is classic. James McPherson has a series of fine studies of various aspects of the war and an excellent recent bio of Lincoln. Douglas Freeman has a multi-volume bio of Lee which is well regarded (I cant say more, having never read it.) There are numerous bios of many other Civil War figures including an excellent bio of Sherman (no, he was not actually crazy, but he was damned peculiar; inter alia his marriage was years delayed because he wouldn't agree even to just visit Ohio where he was raised -- his wife spent her confinements there w/ her parents) by Lee Kennett and Cooper's fine recent bio of Jefferson Davis. It shows the tragedy of a fine man whose life was doomed by his advocacy of the atrocity of slavery. It also demolishes the years of false claims that the War was about anything other than slavery.