According to its publisher, Marja Mills’s new book about Harper Lee is a chronicle of her friendship with the reclusive author of To Kill a Mockingbird and her elder sister, telling of coffees shared at McDonalds and trips to the laundromat in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, catfish suppers and feeding the ducks. But Lee, in a strongly-worded letter she released on Monday, says she would “leav[e] town whenever [Mills] headed this way”, and “as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood”.

Mills’s The Mockingbird Next Door details how, in 2004, the Chicago Tribune journalist moved into the house next door to Harper Lee, who is known by her first name, Nelle, and her sister Alice. Mills lived there for 18 months, writes Penguin Press, “with the Lees’ blessing”. The publisher says that “Nelle shared her love of history, literature, and the Southern way of life with Mills, as well as her keen sense of how journalism should be practised”, and “as the sisters decided to let Mills tell their story, Nelle helped make sure she was getting the story — and the South — right. Alice, the keeper of the Lee family history, shared the stories of their family.”

Lee first made her objections to the book clear in 2011, when she issued a statement via Barnett, Bugg, Lee and Carter, the Monroeville law firm where Alice works, saying that she had “not willingly participated in any book written or to be written by Marja Mills”. “Neither have I authorised such a book. Any claims otherwise are false,” wrote the Pulitzer prize-winning author at the time.

A new statement, released on Monday in the US, saw Lee write that “Miss Mills befriended my elderly sister, Alice. It did not take long to discover Marja’s true mission; another book about Harper Lee. I was hurt, angry and saddened, but not surprised. I immediately cut off all contact with Miss Mills, leaving town whenever she headed this way.”

Mills’ book has already drawn a glowing review in The Washington Post, where Heller McAlpin calls it “a zesty account of two women living on their own terms yet always guided by the strong moral compass instilled in them by their father ... the model for Atticus Finch in his youngest daughter’s first and only novel”, and “an atmospheric tale of changing small-town America; of an unlikely, intergenerational friendship between the young author and her elderly subjects; of journalistic integrity; and of grace and fortitude”.

Covering why Lee never wrote another novel after To Kill a Mockingbird — “it was hard to live up to the ‘impossible expectations’ raised by her first, and Nelle hated the publicity and hoopla,” writes McAlpin — Mills also details the friendship between Lee and Truman Capote, and their falling out. “Truman was a psychopath, honey. He thought the rules that apply to everybody else didn’t apply to him,” Lee told Mills, according to the author.

To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1961, and has sold more than 30m copies around the world. It has recently been released as an e-book for the first time, with Lee commenting at the time that “I’m still old fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries. This is Mockingbird for a new generation.”

—By arrangement with the Guardian

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2014