Capote novel is up for auction

A manuscript of Truman Capote’s unpublished first novel, which the author abandoned and claimed to have destroyed, has been found in a box of papers and will be auctioned this week at Sotheby’s.

The first draft of “Summer Crossing,” the story of a 17-year-old girl who has been left in New York while her parents spend the summer in Europe, was in a box of Capote manuscripts and photos consigned by a relative of Capote’s former house-sitter.

Capote, who died in 1984, had hired the house-sitter to look after his Brooklyn apartment while he was in Switzerland writing “In Cold Blood,” Sotheby’s said.

The writer later closed the Brooklyn apartment and told the landlord that he was abandoning any possessions there. The house-sitter retrieved the box of manuscripts from the sidewalk.