by Elizabeth Winthrop author of
COUNTING ON GRACE
Wendy Lamb Books/Random House,
ISBN # 0-385-74644-X, $15.95
A Junior Library Guild Selection

Click the play button below to hear Elizabeth Winthrop's interview with Dick Gordon of WUNC North Carolina Public Radio about COUNTING ON GRACE

I first saw the picture of Addie in the summer of 2002 at the Bennington Museum. in Bennington, Vermont. She leans on her spinning frame, staring out at the camera, dressed in a filthy, spotted smock. Her one pocket is stuffed so full that it seems to be pulling the right strap of her dress off her narrow shoulder. Her left arm rests easily on the frame, but it is crooked at a strange angle as if perhaps a bone had been broken and was never set properly. Her hair is pulled up away from her face. Her bare feet, planted firmly, are slick with black grease. She looks directly at you, her eyes wide open and solemn, her expression resigned, a little wary. She is beautiful.

Addie was just one in an exhibit of child labor photographs taken by Lewis Hine in northern New England. The note he scribbled in his secret pocket notebook reads "Anemic little spinner in North Pownal Cotton Mill." Once I saw Addie's face, I never forgot it. My character, Grace Forcier, was inspired by that face.

Even though I created Grace from my imagination and she grew to be her very own person, I always wondered about Addie. In addition to the individual portraits Hine took that day, he gathered the children together for group shots and Addie appears in two of them. In both she is pressed right up next to an older girl who is wearing a white shirt, a grease-stained skirt and heavy shoes. They don't look alike, but the way Addie is leaning on this girl's shoulder makes you think they could be sisters.

But who was Addie Laird? What happened to her? The people in North Pownal were always mystified by the name Laird. Most of the workers in New England mills in the early 1900's had been recruited from Canada and Laird is a Scottish name. Then in 1998, at the urging of North Pownal officials, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp of Addie's picture to commemorate child labor laws in their "Celebrate the Century" series. At that time, officials at the U.S. Department of Labor admitted they could find no trace of Addie Laird anywhere.

I had put aside Addie while I created my own 12 year old girl, Grace Forcier. Addie gave me Grace and for the years it took to write the book, Grace is the one who whispered the secrets of her life into my ear. It was only when I finished writing Grace's story that I started searching again for Addie.

And here's what I found. Starting in 1790, the United States has conducted a census of their citizens every ten years. In the Northeast Office of the National Archives and Record Administration in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, When I typed the name Addie into their computer program, nothing came up. But the name Adelaide directed me to Roll 1612, page 111, Sheet 12B. With trembling fingers, I scrolled through reams of names scrawled in flowery, faded handwriting.

Bingo! There on Sheet 12B in Pownal, Vermont, Mr. George E. Corey on the 4th day of May, 1910 recorded the two Card sisters: Anna, Female, White, 14 years of age, Single and Addie, Female, White, 12 years of age, Single, both living with their grandmother, a Mrs. Adalaid Harris, listed as Head of Household.

I had found Addie. Her name never was Laird, it was Card.

Back in 1910, somebody sold watered-down ink to the U.S. Department of Labor and Commerce who were charged with taking the census. Much of the critical information on Sheet 12 B has simply faded away. But this much I could make out. Anna and Addie were both born in Vermont, they both spoke English and they are listed as spinners in the cotton factory.

That first piece of information led me down a path with many a twist and turn. With the help of fellow writer and researcher, Joe Manning (www.morningsonmaplestreet.com/lewishine.html. ), I learned that Addie lived for almost a century. Recently Joe and I sat down with Addie's great granddaughter who knew nothing of the photograph Lewis Hine took that day of her beloved "Gramma Pat". (Addie never liked her name so somewhere along the road of life she changed it to Pat.) Addie married twice and adopted the illegitimate daughter of a Portuguese sailor. She moved often, once to New Jersey and then to New York City. There's a photograph of her with her 20 year old daughter in a Times Square studio celebrating Victory in Europe day in 1945.

In the end, it has to be said that the frail intense mill girl photographed that day in North Pownal lived the dark side of the American dream. She never broke out of the cycle of poverty that started in the mill, but although she ended her days in public housing, she was rich in the love of her family. Her great granddaughter wrote me recently that she was "truly blessed to have shared so many wonderful years with such an extraordinary woman."

In this novel, history and fiction are pieced together the way Grace twisted the ends of cotton thread to keep her frame running. Addie gave me Grace and once I had come to know the daily life of Grace, I needed to go back and find Addie so some part of her story could also be told. These two girls are equally alive for me and I am grateful to them both for their company, their inspiration and in the end, their grit.