Restoring the Mighty Wurlitzer
A Rust Belt F/F Romance

About this book:

Franka Kohl has spent two decades coaxing music from dying pipe organs across the Midwest—grease under her nails, sawdust in her lungs, and a wall around her heart as solid as the cast-iron frames she repairs. When Maeve Miller buys the crumbling Grand Riviera Theatre for back taxes, determined to resurrect its 1928 Mighty Wurlitzer by the town's centennial, Franka expects another dreamer who'll run when the real work starts. Instead, she finds a woman who reads Megger test results like poetry, scrubs copper contacts with a pianist's precision, and refuses to let a steel town's last palace rot.

What begins as a grudging partnership—wiring harnesses in freezing chambers, hunting ciphers through miles of silk-wrapped cable, hauling leather pouches up narrow ladders—sparks into something neither expected. Between the grind of restoration and the quiet moments sharing black coffee in the orchestra pit, two women who've spent years building walls around themselves discover the terrifying, exhilarating resonance of being truly seen.

Set against the soaring architecture of a forgotten atmospheric theatre, *Restoring the Mighty Wurlitzer* is a love letter to Rust Belt resilience, to the dirty, beautiful labor of preservation, and to the courage it takes to let someone in when you've spent a lifetime working alone. Some instruments are meant to be played in unison.