Content Warning: This section references rape and racism.

Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird forms a central motif of Lynda Rutledge’s book and is alluded to in its title. Rutledge demonstrates the importance of the novel for the story’s historical framework as an influential book of the 1960s and borrows from its plot and thematic elements. To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 at the height of the civil rights movement. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and garnered immediate popularity. It remains widely read in schools and considered a classic in modern American Literature. In 1962, just two years after its publication, To Kill a Mockingbird was adapted into an acclaimed film, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. The film further increased the story’s notoriety within American society, and the novel continues to sell millions of copies worldwide. During a transformational period in the history of the United States, Lee grappled with issues of racism, rape, social injustice, racial violence, compassion and humanity.

Like To Kill a Mockingbird, Rutledge’s novel is a bildungsroman that examines the growth of a young protagonist from childhood to adulthood, and both stories unfold through the

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