"She's always been "color blind," he tells her, "… you've never been prodded to look at people as a race, and now that race is the issue of the day, you're still unable to think racially. You only see people."
It would be hard to find a starker contrast to the broad-minded optimism of Mockingbird than that message, which leaves a reader wondering about just where this unearthed novel really stands in Harper Lee's career. Would such a clear-eyed author have been ready to so radically sanitize her own insight to please a publisher? Maybe Watchman really was a sequel-a follow-up by an author who learned more about the prospects of post-racial progress than she'd hoped to. If readers several decades ago weren't ready for such honesty, perhaps they are now."
