Harper Lee has died at the age of 89. The elusive author of To Kill A Mockingbird wrote from the perspective of a young girl (Scout) about life and racial injustice in a small Southern town. It was essentially a story about her own childhood. Lee was enormously modest, saying at various times that she wrote the novel merely by stringing together old letters and later that her editor was the true author of the book. To Kill A Mockingbird became a metaphor for decency and gained international fame and was read by black and white audiences. In later years, the intense focus on race in the U.S. led to criticism that the novel was patronizing of blacks. Lee died peacefully Thursday, publisher Harper Collins said in a statement Friday. It did not give any other details about how she died.