A ‘Mockingbird’ and a good deed

Like the character Boo Radley in her acclaimed novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee has emerged from her secluded life in Alabama to perform an act of charity.

The New York Post reported Thursday that Lee, who never wrote another book and gave her last interview in 1964, recently granted a request to sign a first-edition copy of “Mockingbird” that is being auctioned to raise money for the medical care for the son of Bob Terry, the police chief in Cookeville, Tenn. The young man suffered brain damage following a heart attack in 2003.

The book, donated by Terry’s sister, Linda Bellamy, was expected to sell for between $20,000 and $30,000, the Post said.