“What would it be like to grow up here?”

This was a question I pondered during a visit to Los Alamos, New Mexico, a few years ago. Although the question was prompted by the town’s small size, its relative isolation, and general lack of amenities, my mind quickly took the question in a different direction: what would it be like to grow up in a town with the highest concentrations of PhDs in the country, a place that had developed the atomic bomb, and which continues to be a center of technological innovation? What sort of unique opportunities for adventure might present themselves in such a place? Over the next several months, that question continued to percolate in the back of my mind until the answer eventualy came to me in the form of a story. (Author's photo)

There are several reasons. The first is simply that Los Alamos is where the idea for the story came to me and where I originally envisioned it happening. It's a place I enjoy visiting, and even if I needed to alter certain basic facts about the city—some business names are different, for instance, and I made UNM-LA a four-year institution—I have tried to present the city affectionately and with some fidelity.

Another reason is this; small, remote, and relatively affluent, the Los Alamos of today is anything but threatening, but our worst inventions are not the products of evil scientists working in secret lairs hidden under volcanoes. They are infinitely more likely to come from some innocent-looking research lab in a commercial park, the pharmaceutical lab on the edge of town, or possibly even the garage of some guy down the street. Given that Los Alamos is the place where the atomic bomb was invented, plus its ongoing presence as a research facility, it feels like the kind of place that, given the right confluence of events, just might give rise to something just as horrifying once again. I liked the idea that two terrible and awesome technologies might come into existence in the same place, but generations apart.

Sadly, there were thousands, some even younger than Carmela.

When she was a baby, Carmela Teoli and her family moved from Italy to Lawrence, Massachusetts, to join her father who was already living there. She began working in the Washington Mill some time after turning thirteen (although reports on her age vary.) She really was injured on the job, and her story really did help gain the strikers much-needed public support for their cause. And yes, she actually did testify before a Congressional subcommitee. You can read more about her in Frank Palumbo Jr.'s book Through Carmela's Eyes, available at Amazon.

Children worked at mills throughout the country, not just in the northeast. Young girls, as well as boys, of course, labored in Massachusetts, the Carolinas, Texas, and in many other states. This photo of Fannie, age 7, was taken by Lewis Hines, a man who made it his mission to expose underage child labor and dangerous working conditions for young people throughout the early 1900s. You can view hundreds more such photos at the Library of Congress.