The story of Shannon Stevens, Kelsey Winchester, and mountain woman Addie Elsewhere first began to take shape after a couple of family trips with our three children to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the 1990s. On our first trip, we stopped in Norris, Tennessee, to experience the Museum of Appalachia. We wandered through the restored log cabins and outbuildings, learning from the craftsmen and mountain folks as they described the lives of mountain people of the past. The museum was the inspiration for the log cabins and the girls' clubhouse in the old dairy.
I continued to research Appalachian life. I wasn't an expert by any means, but I slowly began to understand the proud history and struggles of people in the area. Like Shannon, I could close my eyes and imagine what it was like to live in a log cabin 100 years ago. Slowly, the storyline of Addie began to take shape.
