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Aurelia (Rose’s Mother)
Peter Petrofaccio is a contractor of Italian descent living in Vineland in the novel’s present. Although he initially tells Willa that her aunt Dreama’s house is in “shambles,” he later works with Iano to save as much of the structure as possible. He is likely a descendant of Italian immigrants who came to Vineland based on Landis’s misleading claims about financial opportunities.
Peter Petrofaccio Quotes in Unsheltered
The Unsheltered quotes below are all either spoken by Peter Petrofaccio or refer to Peter Petrofaccio. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1: Falling House Quotes
How could two hardworking people do everything right in life and arrive in their fifties essentially destitute? She felt angry at Iano for some infraction that wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny, she knew. His serial failures at job security? Not his fault. Plenty of academics spent their careers chasing tenure from city to town. They were a new class of educated nomads, raising kids with no real answer to the question of where they’d grown up. In provisional homes one after another, with parents who worked ridiculous hours, that’s where.
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Chapter 17: The Downfall Quotes
Mr. Petrofaccio planned to have the whole house taken apart and hauled off by summer’s end and foresaw no problem selling all the salvageable materials, right down to the doorknobs. He was keeping a ledger and would reimburse them for everything he netted beyond his fees. He’d found a motivated buyer for the famous Dunwiddie bricks. The unexpected windfall still felt surreal to Willa. When a house no longer provided shelter, it turned out to be worth exactly the sum of its parts.
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Peter Petrofaccio Character Timeline in Unsheltered
The timeline below shows where the character Peter Petrofaccio appears in Unsheltered. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: Falling House
A contractor named Pete Petrofaccio delivers bad news to Willa Knox: her house is a “shambles” and should be torn...
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...family moved. But the position is temporary and Willa, a magazine editor, is recently unemployed. Petrofaccio notes an old garage—which he calls a “stip house”—on the neighboring property. Years ago, a...
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Hearing Petrofaccio lament the loss of other original homes, Willa wonders if the house is a candidate...
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Chapter 3: Investigators
...and struggling to focus on freelance work. While she was in Boston, Iano and Mr. Petrofaccio concocted a plan to fix the house that involves stopgap measures and historical preservation grants....
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Chapter 17: The Downfall
...supplement their income. They’ve leased an apartment in Philadelphia and made a deal with Pete Petrofaccio to demolish the house and salvage materials in payment for his labor. Tig is thrilled...
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