Monroeville (Alabama), Aug. 24: It's been just over a month since the release of Go Set a Watchman, the long-awaited second novel from Harper Lee. The book has been the publishing sensation of the year, but the literary world has largely moved on now, focused on new releases for autumn and winter.
But in Lee's hometown here, the effects of publishing Watchman linger, like debris from a departing county fair. Even as life returns to its slow rhythms, many residents are adjusting to a new order of things when it comes to Lee, one firmly under the direction of Tonja B. Carter.
Carter is Lee's lawyer, and over the last several years she has consolidated an unusual amount of control over the author's affairs. In recent months she has extended her reach, sometimes to the most minute of details.
About seven weeks ago, for instance, on the day of a luncheon here to celebrate the imminent publication of Watchman, Carter learned about a recipe book, To Fill a Mockingbird, being sold by the small museum inside the old courthouse at the centre of town. The courthouse had been the fictional setting for Lee's 1960 classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Two years earlier, Lee had sued the museum for selling too many items that used her Mockingbird trademark. Carter thought the cookbook violated the settlement in that case.
So she complained to Greg Norris, a Monroe county probate judge and one of the most powerful officials in the county. That afternoon, Judge Norris went to the museum, collected all 282 copies in a cart and wheeled them over to her law office.
"I don't want any more litigation," Judge Norris, the president of the Monroe County Commission, later explained. "So, let's remove them just in case."
In ways big and small, Carter, 50, is shaping the legacy of one of the country's most revered authors.
She is Lee's lawyer, spokeswoman and the trustee of her estate. She holds power of attorney over Lee, who is 89 and infirm, and she has had a role in a trust that the author established around 2011.
She says she is the one who rediscovered the long forgotten manuscript for Watchman and negotiated the deal with HarperCollins for publication rights. And lately, she's taken the reins of a non-profit organisation that Lee created, and she gained control of the play based on Mockingbird that is performed each spring inside the courthouse.
"This level of involvement is highly unusual," said Sallie Randolph, a lawyer who represents authors.
Carter's control of Lee's affairs has become a polarising issue that hangs over this town of about 6,300 residents.
Praised by some as the dutiful protector of an ageing friend, she is derided by others as a spiteful person who wields too much influence over a vulnerable client.
Critics accuse her of pushing Lee, known as Nelle, into publishing Watchman. They believe she encouraged Lee to sue the museum. They chafe at the dwindling guest list she maintains that designates who gets in to see Lee at the assisted living facility here.
They suspect she had some role in the county commission's decision this year to fire the Monroe County Heritage Museum's executive director, who had a tense relationship with Carter.
"I just find Tonja abrasive and frightening, unnecessarily so," said Kathryn Taylor, who was on the board of the museum from 2008 until last year. "Tonja is a rupture with the past, when Alice and Nelle would handle things differently," Taylor said, referring to Lee's older sister.
Others defend her actions, and her motivations.
"There has been a lot of talk around Monroeville that maligned Tonja, that Tonja was some kind of Machiavellian figure in charge of an elderly and infirm author who was being manipulated," said Connie Baggett, a friend of Carter's. "It did damage to her business and damaged her reputation in town. But all Tonja has done is try to defend the interests of Nelle Harper Lee."
Carter's restaurant, the Prop and Gavel, which she owns with her husband, Patrick, was shut down for a year in the midst of an informal boycott by residents.
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