The Summer of Ink and Iron
A Novel

About this book:

The smell of linseed oil and iron greets Maya the moment she steps into Vance Printing, her grandmother’s century-old letterpress shop—but so does a bright yellow condemnation notice slapped to the front window. With ninety days before the wrecking ball swings, a city developer’s greed, and sixty years of back taxes due, the only way to save the shop is to prove it’s a living business, not a museum. That means Maya trades her sketchbook for a composing stick, learning to set type backwards and upside down, to coax perfect impressions from a Vandercook press that weighs two tons, and to find the fifty thousand dollars in revenue that stands between Eleanor Vance and the scrap yard.

As summer heat warps the floorboards, Maya discovers that every drawer of lead type holds a secret history: the wood blocks that announced D-Day to the valley, the wedding invitations for a bride who never made it to the altar, the flour bags that fed a town. With the baker’s curly-haired son delivering sourdough and specifications, and a developer circling like a shark, the shop hums back to life—one painstaking, ink-stained pull at a time. But reviving a dying craft means convincing a digital world that words pressed deep into cotton fiber still matter, and that some things are worth fighting for with your hands.

*The Summer of Ink and Iron* is a love letter to tangible making, a fierce grandmother-granddaughter reckoning, and a David-and-Goliath battle waged with pistons, poetry, and the stubborn belief that the weight of a word can hold back a bulldozer. For anyone who has ever run their fingers over a letterpressed card and felt the impression linger, this novel delivers the grit, the glory, and the ghost impressions of a craft that refuses to die.