Goodreads asked Jotham Burrello:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Jotham Burrello Spindle City is an historical novel about Fall River, MA. In the early 1900s Fall River was a leading producer of cloth and printed textiles in the world. I was born in Fall River and grew up hearing stories about the city's heyday from my grandparents and great aunt. My grandfather was the advertising manager at the Herald Times in the 1950s. In the 1990s I started to conduct research into the history of the mills and became fascinated by the boom and bust of the town. It is the history of manufacturing, and the decline of manufacturing, the US. There are a number of nonfiction books on Fall River and the mills. In the spirit of books like Ragtime I wanted fictional characters to mix with figures like President William Taft. And I wanted to use the events of the period, and the place, as a backdrop for the choices my characters make. Much takes to the folks at the Fall River historical society.

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