Did you know that Harper Lee and Truman Capote were childhood friends? G. Neri has written a fictional story about this friendship in a middle-grade novel entitled Tru and Nelle.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers has set the publication date for March 01, 2016. As children, Lee and Capote bonded over a shared love of mystery stories starring Sherlock Holmes and the Rover Boys. Later on, the two writers inspired one another on projects that have since become well-known bestsellers.
Here’s more from The New York Times: “Ms. Lee drew on their friendship in her portrait of the characters Scout and Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird and in her newly released novel, Go Set a Watchman. Mr. Capote based the brash, sharp-tongued tomboy Idabel Thompkins in his debut novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, on Nelle. They worked together on Mr. Capote’s true crime book In Cold Blood, then drifted apart after Mr. Capote failed to credit her properly.”