Grace Given for Free in Square

A story of Guatemalan refugees, immigration, homosexuality, and human kindness made its way to Harvard Square park benches, Starbucks counters, and ATMs this Christmas thanks to a cutting-edge marketing scheme developed by its author: freebies. Grace, a novel set in Harvard Square in 1992, evokes memories of “charming coffee houses before the expansion of big business in Harvard Square” according to the author, Barbara Hindley, who placed copies of her novel throughout Harvard Square as gifts to perfect strangers.

The novel’s principle characters include Nick and Arthur, an interracial gay couple, Rosa, who has escaped from war-torn Guatemala, and Child, who is entangled with the foster care system. Now an Arlington resident, Hindley calls her novel “a Harvard Square story.” The novel takes the audience to a number of locations on the Harvard campus, including Memorial Hall.

Hindley pursued her guerilla marketing through Ebb Tide Editions, a publishing company she established in the fall of 2004 with fellow author Emily Heistand as a vehicle for Grace’s distribution. According to Hindley, the idea to distribute free copies started “not as a marketing idea” but as a way of “doing something different.” Hindley believes that, with the novel’s overarching theme of human kindness, it only made sense “to distribute in Harvard Square.”

Hindley and Heistand took to the cobblestone in and around Harvard to distribute 50 copies on Dec. 4, 2004. She began by placing the books in the heart of Harvard Square. Each book contained a bookmark stating, “Take this book. Grace is a gift.”

Hindley had only two objectives—to share her work and to make sure people discovered Grace while alone. She returned a couple hours after her initial distribution to find most of the copies gone. “Right then, two women found the two remaining books,” she recalled. “They picked them up and looked at each other in disbelief.”

A common reaction, Hindley says, is that of “being charmed by getting something for free.” In all, Hindley estimates that 100 copies made their way to popular establishments throughout Harvard Square. Hindley expanded her marketing scope by having a friend “put one copy on the Red Line everyday on his way to work.”

The Harvard Coop began carrying copies of Grace soon after Hindley’s novel turned up on street corners and Cambridge landmarks. Hindley reasons that the establishment “realized it was important to carry it.”

Hindley set out to tell a tale proving that “families aren’t necessarily connected by bloodlines.” Originally a screenplay, she said Grace was being shopped around movie studios in Los Angeles when she decided to turn it into a novel. “A Christmas story about a gay couple doesn’t make it in Los Angeles,” she said.

“It’s unsurprising and unfortunate that we can’t expect a Christmas story about a gay couple to be well received by the American public. This is yet another example of intolerance on the societal level,” said Mischa A. Feldstein ’07, public relations chair of the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance and a Crimson editor.

Hindley drew inspiration for her two main characters, Nick and Arthur, from her former roommates. Hindley joked that she “lived with a gay couple long before ‘Will & Grace.’ ”

Half of the proceeds from her book opening on Dec. 2 went to One Family, an organization that works with foster care system in Massachusetts.

Hindley said she is unsure of her future writing plans, but is in the process of adapting another screenplay. The idea of a sequel to Grace is possible, she said, but unlikely. Plot ideas include the future of Nick and Arthur’s relationship following the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts or the adult life of Child as an artist.