The Chain

Description

It is spring, 1982 and change is in the air … Frank has left the Hutt Valley in a quest for a job in one of the big meatworks in the Hawkes Bay. Mereana’s uncle Kingi has got her a place on the mutton slaughter floor and taken her away from life in the backblocks. Adam, who has weathered many a sacking, is trying his luck back at the employment office. The meat companies have plans to bring in machinery that will wipe out jobs, and the government is about to eliminate subsidies to farmers. James Robb tells the uncompromising story of ordinary people transformed in the dramatic events that ensue. He takes us under the skin of a semi-rural working class world rarely seen in contemporary literature.

Author description

James Robb grew up in Wellington. During the 1980s and ’90s he worked in meat works, car assembly plants, a tannery, and fish processing, carpet and biscuit factories in the Hutt Valley, Hastings, and Auckland. Currently he is a high school teacher in Auckland. This is his first novel.