To Kill a Mockingbird is a 1960 novel by Harper Lee that is considered a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, and a Southern Gothic. The story is set in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression and is narrated by Scout Finch, a six-year-old tomboy. The novel follows Scout and her older brother Jem as their father, Atticus, defends a Black man who has been wrongly accused of raping a white woman. The story explores themes of racial prejudice, societal injustices, and moral conflicts, and how good and evil can coexist within a community