“Since Atlanta, she had looked out the dining-car window with a delight almost physical.”

Now an adult, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch lives in New York and enjoys all that life in the 1950’s North allows her. However, her annual trip home to Alabama to visit her father, Atticus, has made her excited to temporarily leave New York behind for a while. While Jean Louise is thrilled to be home, the changes that her family, friends, and town have faced over the past few years are unavoidable for her. After idolizing her father for her entire life, Jean Louise is shocked to find an anti-black pamphlet in her father’s things, so when he goes to a meeting. After following Atticus, Jean Louise is horrified to see the father she so respects spend time with highly racist people, and leaves when she can stomach no more. The next day, the family’s former maid, Calpurnia, informs Atticus and Jean Louise that her grandson killed a pedestrian while driving the night before, and Atticus takes the case. Unable to avoid the subject any longer, Jean Louise confronts Atticus and Hank, her childhood sweetheart turned father’s employee, about their involvement in the racist meetings, but both state their involvement is solely to keep the racist ideologies from taking over. However, the more Jean Louise pushes Atticus for the reasoning behind his latest actions and ideologies, she’s left struggling to understand how her father now could be so different from the man that shaped her worldview as a child.