John Thorndike (born November 6, 1942, in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
) is an American writer.
Biography
Thorndike lives in Athens, Ohio. He grew up in Westport, Connecticut, graduated from Deerfield Academy in 1960, and from Harvard in 1964, took an MA in English from Columbia in 1966, and spent two years in El Salvador in the Peace Corps. After seven years in Latin America, he returned to the U.S., settled in Ohio and farmed for ten years.
His first book was the novel ''Anna Delaney’s Child'', about a woman whose nine-year-old son dies in a car crash.
His second novel was ''The Potato Baron'', about the owner of a large potato farm in northern Maine who must choose between his wife—who wants to live somewhere other than Aroostook County—and the life he loves on his ancestral land.
Thorndike’s third book was a memoir, ''Another Way Home'', about raising his son after his wife became schizophrenic.
His next book, ''The Last of His Mind: A Year in The Shadow of Alzheimer’s'', was published by Swallow Press, a division of Ohio University Press, in October 2009. It is a memoir of the year he spent looking after his father,
Joseph J. Thorndike
Joseph Jacobs Thorndike (July 29, 1913 – November 22, 2005) was an American editor and writer.[Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...](_blank)
'' from 1946–49 and a founder of ''
American Heritage American Heritage may refer to:
* ''American Heritage'' (magazine)
* ''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language''
* American Heritage Rivers
* American Heritage School (disambiguation)
See also
*National Register of Historic Place ...
'' and ''
Horizon
The horizon is the apparent line that separates the surface of a celestial body from its sky when viewed from the perspective of an observer on or near the surface of the relevant body. This line divides all viewing directions based on whether i ...
'' magazines—as he lost his memory, language, self-awareness, and ultimately his life.
His fifth book, ''A Hundred Fires in Cuba,'' was published in 2018 by Beck & Branch. ''Kirkus'' gave it a starred review. It's a historical novel that opens in 1959 in Havana, where a young American photographer must choose between her stable Cuban husband and her first love, Camilo Cienfuegos, the father of her child and now a hero of the Cuban Revolution.
Bibliography
*''Anna Delaney’s Child'' - Hardcover: 273 pages, Macmillan (1986), . Paperback: 273 pages; Plume (1987),
*''The Potato Baron'' - Hardcover: 284 pages, Villard (1989),
*''Another Way Home: A Single Father’s Story'' - Hardcover: 245 pages, Crown (1996), ; Paperback: 245 pages, Penguin (1997),
*''The Last of His Mind - 243 pages, Swallow Press'' (2009), . Paperback: 243 pages, Swallow Press (2011),
References
External links
John Thorndike website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thorndike, John
1940 births
Harvard University alumni
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Living people
American male writers