Ahhh... There was a book I read when I was a kid, he wasn't the main character, he was a child who had juvenile RA... and the main character was envious because he wasn't required to go to school. He was out fishing and playing all the time. What was that... I'm going to go look now. Might take me a minute or two...

I have been following the news about it, Sally. I think there's no doubt she wrote the book- it was submitted to a publisher in the 1950s, who told her to write about the main character as a child: Scout Finch. The controversy is over whether or not she is capable of consenting to its publication, or if she regarded it as juvenalia, unfit to see the light of day.

I finished the first chapter between my first post and now. Pretty darn good. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/harper-lees-go-set-a-watchman-read-the-first-chapter-1436500861


Here's a link to the text of the first chapter. Save you all from googling it!

Thanks for posting this Alto. I'm trying to finish a rather long book (World Without End, 1000ish pages) so I can read Watchman when it is released.

I can't find the story to which I was referring. It's driving me crazy... Well, crazier.

Success! "Stolen Day" by Sherwood Anderson. It's a short story written in 1941. The boy has "inflammatory rheumatism."

My Librarian wife drug me to Monroeville a few years ago for the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird. I thought that I lived in the middle of nowhere Alabama. I was wrong. The old courthouse is quite neat, there was lots of stuff about Harper Lee and Truman Capote. But, all in all, rather underwhelming to me. Hope y'all enjoy the book.

Nightshades, here is Harper Lee's description of her hometown, fictionalized as Maycomb:

"Home was Maycomb County, a gerrymander some seventy miles long and spreading thirty miles at its widest point, a wilderness dotted with tiny settlements the largest of which was Maycomb, the county seat. Until comparatively recently in its history, Maycomb County was so cut off from the rest of the nation that some of its citizens, unaware of the Souths political predilections over the past ninety years, still voted Republican. No trains went thereMaycomb Junction, a courtesy title, was located in Abbott County, twenty miles away. Bus service was erratic and seemed to go nowhere, but the Federal Government had forced a highway or two through the swamps, thus giving the citizens an opportunity for free egress. But few people took advantage of the roads, and why should they? If you did not want much, there was plenty."

Gotta say, this woman has a way with words! Matches up with your description well.