Why not leave Atticus Finch as he was?

Draft: n. a rough or preliminary sketch of a piece of writing.

First, we want to assure you that this is the final version of this editorial. There was an earlier draft, but it was swiftly moved to the trash as we sharpened our writing and tightened our thinking. We believe this is the version, the only one, that deserves publishing.

Not so with the once-immutable American classic, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” You thought you knew its story and its characters: Harper Lee’s 1960 near-perfect telling of the events of one fateful summer in fictional Maycomb, Alabama, through the eyes of a young Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and friend Dill. Their scary neighbor, Boo Radley. Culpernia the housekeeper, Aunt Alexandra and poor Tom Robinson. And, above everyone, Atticus Finch, that rare literary character whose unwavering sense of fairness would influence generations of young readers coming to terms with the racial and social justice issues that still smolder.

But, it turns out, there was much more to the story. The fictional Atticus, like real people, did waver.

We know this because some 55 years later, improbably, there’s a new Harper Lee book about Scout and her father, Atticus, and some of our other favorite characters (though not all of them) called “Go Set a Watchman.” It’s not exactly a new book, though.

When news broke in February that another Harper Lee manuscript had been discovered and would be published as a companion to “Mockingbird,” speculation and conspiracy theories swirled. Was it a sequel? Was it an early draft of “Mockingbird?” Or was it a separate, different novel? Publisher HarperCollins called it a “newly discovered novel.”

“It’s a prequel sequel, written before ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ You get a sense of the character development as Harper Lee imagined it in the beginning. It is quite an interesting structure,” said Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp., which owns HarperCollins.

A prequel sequel? We think it’s a lot of rationalization for cashing in on what is little more than an early manuscript that was yet to be edited and shouldn’t have been published. “Go Set a Watchman” was the original title of “Mockingbird,” and the novel released Tuesday is, by most accounts (including Lee’s), simply an early draft of the story that eventually was reworked into “Mockingbird.”

It’s unclear if the famously private Lee, now 89 and living in an assisted living home where she is nearly deaf and blind, really wanted “Watchman” published — her lawyer Tonja Carter says so, but others are skeptical. And some say Lee’s recently deceased sister, Alice, her lawyer and protector for so many decades, might’ve prevented it.

But the book is paying off for HarperCollins. It set an all-time preorder record for the publisher in early June, and Amazon said Friday it had become the most preordered book for the online retailer since the final Harry Potter book.

“Watchman” is set in the late 1950s and tells the story of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, a 26-year-old New Yorker returning to Maycomb, where she confronts the racism, bigotry and social upheaval in her hometown. Her father, Atticus — that pillar of moral strength, forever strappingly handsome (like a Gregory Peck, frozen in his 1962 role as Atticus) and noble and good — is now around 70, creaky with arthritis and determined to keep his segregated world just so. He pals around with the Ku Klux Klan and says racist things that Scout can’t reconcile with her memories of a better Atticus. (Her flashbacks give glimpses of the story that became the heart of “Mockingbird.”)

We can’t reconcile the change either, as much as this elder Atticus might illustrate the way people’s views ebb and flow through life. But a fictional character can remain unchanged, so why not leave Atticus be? With so many real-life characters tumbling off their pedestals (Bill Cosby comes to mind), why knock such a noble literary hero off his?

Read “Watchman” if you’re curious to see how a first draft looks, but we plan to hold on to the Atticus we already know, the one who cautioned: “There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ‘em all away from you. That’s never possible.”

The above editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday.