55 years after the release of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-wining To Kill a Mockingbird – her first and only novel – the author is finally ready to publish her second. Titled “Go Set a Watchman”, Lee describes it as “essentially a sequel” to Mockingbird, which sold over 40 million copies globally in route to being considered one of the most significant literary works of the 20^th Century.

“Go Set a Watchman” is a continuation of the events in Mockingbird, following Jean Louis Finch (Scout) into adulthood.

From the official publisher’s statement: “Scout has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father, Atticus. She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood.”

Lee supposedly finished the 304-page Watchman prior to writing Mockingbird, but was advised by an editor to shelf it and focus on Scout’s youth.  “The original manuscript of the novel was considered to have been lost until fall 2014, when Tonja Carter discovered it in a secure location where it had been affixed to an original typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird,” stated a representative of publisher Harper Collins.

After the release of her debut tale of racism in the south, Lee withdrew from the public eye, and did not publish another novel despite the critical acclaim she received. The author admits: “I didn’t expect the book to sell in the first place”, and that the reaction was “just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I’d expected … like being hit over the head and knocked cold”.

The 88-year-old Lee is nearly blind and deaf now, and spends her days in an assisted-living. And in the words of the author, Watchman is: “A pretty decent effort.”

Whether it goes on to sell another 40 million copies, however, remains to be seen.