Finding Fortune (25 page)

Cut shells alongside a pile of pearl buttons—the finished product.
Once the pearl buttons had been drilled with holes and polished, they were hand-sewn onto decorative cards for display in retail shops. Button companies often hired out the sewing to local families, who completed the work at home. (Courtesy of the Copeland Collection)

Muscatine's Pearl Button Queen, 1946.
Thirty-five years before he became president, actor Ronald Reagan was given the honor of selecting the queen from seven contestants. In a 1981
Muscatine Journal
interview, Helen Burke recalled what it was like to be chosen: “They gave me a big bunch of roses and put a crown on my head—and I immediately fainted!” (Courtesy of the Muscatine History and Industry Center)

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

If there were such a thing as a “Kind and Gracious Fellow-Author Award,” Jeffrey Copeland should win it. Jeff patiently answered my countless questions about the pearl-button industry, reviewed my manuscript, shared photographs, and provided all-around encouragement, even though I had an uncanny knack for contacting him on the eve of his own book tours and research trips. His fine book
Shell Games: The Life and Times of Pearl McGill, Industrial Spy and Pioneer Labor Activist
(Paragon House, 2012) served as an important resource in my research.

My sincere appreciation also goes to:

Melanie K. Alexander for her invaluable pictorial history,
Muscatine's Pearl Button Industry
, Images of America Series (Arcadia Publishing, 2007).

Mike Kilen,
Des Moines Register
reporter, for his feature story “Fading Away” (October 12, 2008), which helped to inspire this story and provided my first introduction to Mayor Emmet Joy.

Mary Wildermuth, director of the Muscatine History and Industry Center, for her assistance with my research and photo selection.

Terry Eagle, assistant director of the Center, for guiding one of the best field trips of my writing career. I'll never forget my frozen-in-time look inside the old button factory, as well as the tour of the McKee Button Company, still in operation more than a century after its founding.

Margaret Weber—also more than one hundred years old!—for sharing her memories of the Weber Button Company.

My dear friends and colleagues Terri Gullickson and Jennifer Black Reinhardt, as always, for their support and honest opinions.

I'm also grateful to Laura Langlie, my wonderful agent, for having faith when mine was wavering … and to my wise editor, Margaret Ferguson, for helping me to grind and polish my rough button blank into a pearlier version of its former self.

My deepest thanks I've saved for Bobby and Dan Ray for tirelessly listening, reading, and smoothing the way.

 

ALSO BY
DELIA RAY

Behind the Blue and Gray: The Soldier's Life in the Civil War

Ghost Girl: A Blue Ridge Mountain Story

Singing Hands

Here Lies Linc

 

Thank you for buying this

Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.

 

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

 

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

 

For email updates on the author, click
here
.

 

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

Twenty-nine

Thirty

Author's Note

Photographs

Acknowledgments

Also by Delia Ray

Copyright

 

Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010

Text copyright © 2015 by Delia Ray

All rights reserved

First hardcover edition, 2015

eBook edition, November 2015

mackids.com

Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Ray, Delia.

    Finding Fortune / Delia Ray. — First edition.

        pages cm

    Summary: Angry with her mother, twelve-year-old runaway Ren finds an unusual boardinghouse in a nearby ghost town, Fortune, where she meets some interesting people and learns of a forgotten treasure from when the town was famous for buttons made of Mississippi River shells.

    ISBN 978-0-374-30065-4 (hardback)

    ISBN 978-0-374-30067-8 (e-book)

    [1.  Boardinghouses—Fiction.   2.  Lost and found possessions—Fiction.   3.  Family problems—Fiction.   4.  Runaways—Fiction.   5.  Mystery and detective stories.]   I.  Title.

PZ7.R2101315Fin 2015

[Fic]—dc23

2014042436

eISBN 9780374300678