She asks him about Atticus and Hank, and Jack gives her vague and convoluted arguments about the Civil War. Jean Louise doesn’t fit in with any of them, and is repulsed by their racist gossip. Jean Louise returns home, where Aunt Alexandra holds a “Coffee” for the young women of Maycomb to visit her. Jean Louise goes to visit Calpurnia, who is cold and distant with her, which upsets Jean Louise greatly. Atticus says he will defend him, but only to keep the NAACP off the case. She then learns that the Finches’ old black housekeeper Calpurnia’s grandson was driving drunk and killed a white man the night before. In the present Jean Louise wakes up and avoids talking to anyone. She planned to kill herself to avoid bringing shame on her family, but was stopped by Hank at the last minute. Jean Louise has a flashback to when she was in sixth grade and thought that she was pregnant because a boy kissed her. She gets an ice cream and then throws up, walks home, and falls asleep. Jean Louise leaves and wanders through town, stopping at the ice cream shop where her childhood home in town used to stand. Jean Louise watches Atticus and Hank and feels physically sick. Atticus introduces the meeting’s speaker, whose speech (defending segregation) is full of racist invective and fearmongering. Jean Louise goes to the courthouse and sees that almost every man in town is there, including Hank and her father. Jean Louise finds a racist pamphlet called “ The Black Plague” among her father’s papers.

That afternoon Hank picks up Atticus for a “citizens’ council” meeting at the town courthouse. At church Jack is horrified when the organist plays a tradition hymn differently. The next morning the family goes to church with Uncle Jack, an eccentric former doctor. Hank and Jean Louise go swimming at Finches’ Landing, which was once the family’s estate but is now a hunting club. Hank takes Jean Louise on a date, and she reminisces about her childhood when she, Jem, and their friend Dill had a pretend religious revival and baptism. Jean Louise suggests that she might marry Hank, but Alexandra disapproves. They drive home and Jean Louise briefly discusses the Supreme Court decision “Brown v. Hank repeats his earlier proposals of marriage and Jean Louise half-rejects them. Hank picks up Jean Louise in Atticus’s car. Jean Louise’s older brother Jem died years earlier. His sister Alexandra now lives with him, and his business apprentice is Henry “Hank” Clinton, Jean Louise’s oldest friend and beau. As a girl in Maycomb, she was raised by her father, the lawyer Atticus Finch, who is now seventy-two and has rheumatoid arthritis. The twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch takes a train from her current home in New York City to visit her hometown of Maycomb, Alabama.

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee