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Loom Fixer
Tony Pettyjohn grew up in a textile town, Maple Grove, North Carolina, raised by a good-timing, single mother in the home of an abusive grandfather until sentenced to reform school for stealing a blouse for his mother's birthday. After release he worked in the cotton mill in Maple Grove, beginning as a cloth boy and rising to foreman until sent to prison for a murder his mother committed. The Loom Fixer explores living and working in a textile town and mill, including life outside, the good times and bad times. A life now gone for good.
305 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 8, 2022
1 person is currently reading
2 people want to read
About the author
John Barlow
53 books49 followersJohn Barlow's prize-winning fiction and non-fiction has been published by HarperCollins/William Morrow, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 4th Estate and various others in the UK, US, Australia, Russia, Italy, Germany, Spain and Poland.
His current project is the Joe Romano crime thriller series. The first novel, RIGHT TO KILL, is out in the UK with HQ/HarperCollins on June 24th, 2021.
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John was born in West Yorkshire, England, in 1967. He worked as a musician before studying English Literature at Cambridge University and language acquisition at Hull University. After teaching English for several years, he moved to Spain to write full-time, and has been there ever since. He is married to Susana, with whom he has two sons. They currently live in the Galician city of A Coruña.
Apart from writing fiction, he also works as a ghost writer and journalist. He has written for the Washington Post, Slate.com, Penthouse, Departures Magazine and The Big Issue, and he is currently a feature writer for the award-winning food magazine Spain Gourmetour.
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John's first published work, a novella, won the Paris Review's Discovery (Plimpton) Prize in 2002. He went on to publish a collection of novellas, EATING MAMMALS, the novel INTOXICATED, set in the late nineteenth century, and EVERYTHING BUT THE SQUEAL, a food-travelogue about Spain. He then published the off-beat noir novel WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO JERRY PICCO?, and three novels in the LS9 series, featuring amateur sleuth John Ray.
John has also worked with the conceptual artists goldin+enneby on their ACÉPHALE project, which has so far taken him to Nassau, Bergamo, Oslo and London, and into the company of Bahamian off-shore bankers, defamation layers, prize-winning artists, and Martina Navratilova. His writing for the project has been published variously in English, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Portuguese, and has featured at numerous art shows/galleries in the UK, the US, Canada, Brazil, Spain, Sweden, Norway and Italy. The novel HEADLESS, based on the project, was release in 2013.
His current project is the Joe Romano crime thriller series. The first novel, RIGHT TO KILL, is out in the UK with HQ/HarperCollins on June 24th, 2021.
***
John was born in West Yorkshire, England, in 1967. He worked as a musician before studying English Literature at Cambridge University and language acquisition at Hull University. After teaching English for several years, he moved to Spain to write full-time, and has been there ever since. He is married to Susana, with whom he has two sons. They currently live in the Galician city of A Coruña.
Apart from writing fiction, he also works as a ghost writer and journalist. He has written for the Washington Post, Slate.com, Penthouse, Departures Magazine and The Big Issue, and he is currently a feature writer for the award-winning food magazine Spain Gourmetour.
***
John's first published work, a novella, won the Paris Review's Discovery (Plimpton) Prize in 2002. He went on to publish a collection of novellas, EATING MAMMALS, the novel INTOXICATED, set in the late nineteenth century, and EVERYTHING BUT THE SQUEAL, a food-travelogue about Spain. He then published the off-beat noir novel WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO JERRY PICCO?, and three novels in the LS9 series, featuring amateur sleuth John Ray.
John has also worked with the conceptual artists goldin+enneby on their ACÉPHALE project, which has so far taken him to Nassau, Bergamo, Oslo and London, and into the company of Bahamian off-shore bankers, defamation layers, prize-winning artists, and Martina Navratilova. His writing for the project has been published variously in English, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Portuguese, and has featured at numerous art shows/galleries in the UK, the US, Canada, Brazil, Spain, Sweden, Norway and Italy. The novel HEADLESS, based on the project, was release in 2013.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 22, 2023
Reading and anticipating sad/bad things to happen to Tony but he does okay until finally not. The author (very local to me) is an attorney and portrays the small town courtroom without much hope. He’s from Kannapolis and lives of mill workers are vivid. He disses the northerners who come down later to convert the shuttered mills into biotech — but fails to mention research on cancer therapies, although many of the mill workers are either covered in particulate from the looms or smokers — with lots of coughing by the older folks. Tony’s mom could be called Cat, as she seems to land on her feet despite the other men in her life. What’s left for Tony by the end? I think he’ll be okay. He asks questions and people can see that he’s not a bad person; he’s a loom fixer.
Displaying 1 of 1 review