Telling Grace's story gave me the idea of looking for Addie.' So it's very important to me that Grace and Addie are kept completely separate. 'It wasn't until the novel was finished and into the editing process that it occurred to me to go look for Addie herself. 'I knew nothing about the real girl's life at the time and didn't want to know anything,' Winthrop said. Grace caught her imagination first, but Addie followed. But as her work wound down, something took hold of her and the detective came out yet again. Winthrop said she deliberately avoided personalizing her protagonist's alter-ego while she was writing the book. It wasn't until Winthrop was well into writing the book that she became intrigued with the actual girl in the photo, who she later learned was named Addie. That's when I really understood first hand what difficult work doffing would be for children.'ĭoffing the bobbins means taking the full spools of thread off the machines, and doffers were often the poorest and least skilled workers at a mill. 'The most thrilling moment was when a wonderful docent at the Textile History Museum agreed to run a spinning frame and have me doff the bobbins. 'I've always done research for my novels in fact, the most research was done in creating the character Grace and in trying to imagine the life of a 12-year-old French Canadian girl working in the mills in the early 20th century,' Winthrop said. She also listened to French Canadian music and interviewed descendants of mill workers in the Pownal area. She spent time at the American Textile History Museum in Lowell and studied French Canadian oral histories, some of which are also available on the Library of Congress Web site. The novel required considerable period research, Winthrop said.

Winthrop began her first stint of detective work: through inquiry and imagination, she created the story of a mill girl's family and life. When a chance comes to protest and change the mill workers' grim conditions, Grace looks within herself to make sense of that world and her family's place in it.įrom the first time she saw the Hine photograph, Winthrop said, the girl's face inspired her to tell the story of a child like her. Her central character, 12-year-old Grace Forcier, the daughter of Quebec immigrants, works in the Pownal mill. Winthrop spun that environment into a story of demanding industrialists, the labor reform movement, and abject poverty.

Counting on grace by elizabeth winthrop