I was a new dad when I read “To Kill a Mockingbird” for the first time, and in Atticus Finch I found an ideal role model. Here was an engaged father, tender with his kids, going about it with a sense of humor. And of course, as the novel unfolds, Atticus’ moral courage is matched only by his eloquence, and a dignity so potent people rise to their feet instinctively as he walks by, even in defeat. Who can forget the Reverend Sykes admonishing Scout, as they watch from the balcony of the Maycomb County Courthouse: “Miss Jeanne Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.”

Daddy Rules columnist Dan Coleman and his children, Ray and Zia

So I was as excited as anyone when I heard a Mockingbird follow-up was finally going to press. The new book, Go Set a Watchman, provoked more questions than it answered: Did the 89-year old Harper Lee, from whom only thunderous silence issued in the decades after she wrote one of America’s best loved novels, really want this work to see the light of day? Is there reason to doubt the manuscript’s murky origin story, as revealed by her own spokespeople?

But most of all, what’s with Atticus? Early reviews unveiled the big surprise in store for the adult Scout, as well as us Mockingbird fans, when she returns from New York to visit an aging Atticus who turns out to be an unrepentant states’ rights segregationist, actively digging in his heels against Brown v. Board.

I had heard, but still wasn’t prepared for the shock of perching with Scout again in the courthouse balcony, and seeing Atticus, right there where he once so righteously denounced racism, give the floor to a fire-eating white supremacist. And Atticus doesn’t just listen in silence, which would be bad enough. He introduces the guy, who gives an ugly pep talk intended to create a storm of hatred in Maycomb to rival that through which the Little Rock Nine bravely made their way to the right side of history.

So there it was. Scout leaves the building unable to look her own father in the eye, let alone speak to him, and I almost chucked the book myself, there and then. How could Harper Lee do this to us?

But I read on, saved by Atticus’ simple trick from back in the good old days: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

No, I won’t cut Atticus any slack for being a man of his time, or accept his subtle brand of paternalistic racism, which may have done even more harm than that of the spitters. But I can sympathize with a parent who reveals himself to be imperfect. Every day, my own incorrect decisions, moral shortcomings, and tactical blunders are made plain in many small ways, and some big ones. My kids scream like it’s the end of the world, but at least half the time their tears flow as a result of my own bad calls. I’m the one who got my son all sugared up with too many sweets yesterday. Today I’m the one who stops my daughter in the middle of an activity I should never even have let her begin: “Sorry sweetheart, but you can’t sit on the kitchen table with a bare bottom anymore!”

And that’s just the small stuff. Eventually, like all children, mine will become aware of my fundamental flaws, bad behavior, and general wrongheadedness about whatever it is I’ve currently got all wrong without realizing it, just as I struggled with the audacity of my own parents to be human.

The old Atticus is still my hero, but wasn’t he a little too perfect? Critics have rightly been hard on Watchman for its lack of polish and heavy reliance on a reader’s prior experience of Mockingbird. But for all that, Watchman may be a truer book. We all let our kids down somehow, and eventually they, too, will lose faith in their parents, just as we did.

The question Lee poses now is how to go on in the face of this inevitable disappointment. And who better to ask than Atticus, whose definition of courage summarizes the situation: “It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

Assuming the Alabama Securities Commission was correct in its ruling that Harper Lee is of sound mind, it took that kind of guts to publish this new book, which shows her willingness to sacrifice a legacy of literary perfection to tell an awkward truth with an unfinished manuscript, and reveal that the best dad anyone can think of, a character based on her own father, is flawed just like everyone else. The new Atticus is really the same old Atticus, only his message is different: Summoning the courage to try is as close as anyone ever gets to being a “good” parent, and we need only look to the headlines to see that, like Atticus, we’re not as far along as we thought when it comes to race. It’s not something people want to hear, but that never stopped Atticus before. And while Watchman is not the masterpiece Mockingbird remains, as Atticus always said to Scout when she was not quite up to snuff: “That’ll do.”

— Dan Coleman is secretary on the board of Dads of Douglas County. He is a part-time stay at home dad with a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, but in his other life he is a librarian at the Lawrence Public Library, where he selects children’s and parenting books for the Children’s Room. He can be reached at danielfcoleman@yahoo.com.