The Fall of the Loom: A Novel

by M. E. Auman

Step into a world where every tapestry is a portal to somewhere else…

Sophie O'Toole has always been more interested in weaving tapestries than traveling through them. But now she's ready to escape her small town in Western New York to study weaving at one of England's most prestigious colleges. At East Lawn, she will learn the secrets of transforming thread into the tapestries everyone uses for transportation and recreation.

But weaving is easy compared to navigating campus life and a new country with her roommates — and their incredibly attractive older brothers. And those aren't the only challenges in store for Sophie, as she becomes entangled in the mystery surrounding the death of Britain's most beloved tapestry designer, Sabrina Maxwell.

When Sophie discovers the design for Sabrina's final, unwoven tapestry, it could be the clue that's been missing all this time. But will weaving the tapestry unravel the mystery behind Sabrina's death? Or will the months of work — and the relationships Sophie sacrifices in the process — lead to nothing more than a tangled mess?

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The Fall of the Loom is a cozy academic fantasy mystery with a dash of low-spice romance and a smattering of salty language. It's also a love letter to the art of weaving and an imagined version of our world where tapestries serve as the dominant mode of transportation.

315 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 4, 2025

Reviews

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was a fantastic novel. I appreciate the knowledge of tapestries and weaving behind it all. I do hope that this is the first in a series!

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I chose this book to read because I'm a weaver and recently started learning how to do tapestry weaving.
Sophie O'Toole lives in a small town in Western New York and she's going to England to attend East Lawn, a prestigious college to learn tapestry weaving. She has grown up helping her mom repair tapestries. Some tapestries are used for transportation and recreation, but they must be woven with a specific type of yarn for that purpose. The biggest challenge for Sophie is finding her way around the campus, a new country and living with roommates. She learns of a mystery surrounding the death of a famous tapestry designer who is the mother of one of her roommates and discovers the design for her final unwoven tapestry.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the idea behind this novel, and for a self-published work it came off reasonably well. However, it illustrates how valuable a professional editor could be, both in terms of advising an author on plotting and casting an expert eye over the text for typos and other mistakes. For non-weavers, a bit more detail about the mechanics of weaving might have been interesting; for weavers it might have been better not to set it so transparently at West Dean!