On a day when mockingbirds sang outside the courthouse that inspired her classic American novel, author Harper Lee was laid to rest in a private ceremony, a reflection of how she had lived.
A few dozen people who comprised Lee's intimate circle gathered Saturday at a church in the small Alabama town of Monroeville, which the author used as a model for the imaginary town of Maycomb, the setting of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Mockingbirds chirped and frolicked among blooming camellia bushes outside the courthouse on a warm Alabama morning that teased the early arrival of spring.