Roy Underhill’s first novel is complete and off to the printer. It is an enormous honor to publish this labor of love, which Roy has been working on for years. (I really don’t want to ask how many hours he has in this manuscript.)
In true form, as I was preparing the digital files for upload this evening, Roy called me to add one more joke – something that popped into his head while he was soaking in the bathtub. And it involved a prosthetic leg.
So of course we added it.
And you can see above, the cover came out quite nicely. Jode Thompson, the illustrator, blew us all away with her work. And her work ethic. We typically work odd hours, and she was always right there ready to help.
If everything goes well, the book should ship from the printer in mid-November – just in time for Christmas. It will be $29. As per usual, everything we do is printed in the United States. This book will be hardbound with a red cloth cover and a full-color matte dust jacket. The interior pages will be casebound and sewn for durability.
I don’t have any more details on where it will be available, but I will post them when I get them.
We’ll soon be posting some excerpts from the novel for your enjoyment. until then, here is the description of the book that Megan Fitzpatrick wrote for the dust flap.
“Calvin Cobb is Section Chief of the Broadcast Research division – the smallest section of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Along with his staff of four women (all severely injured WWI volunteers), Calvin studies “broadcast seed, nutrient and amendment distribution technology and practice” – that is, what happens when the sh*t actually hits the fan.
“But the four women are more interested in developing the world’s first supercomputer (using abandoned punch-card tabulating machines), and Calvin is more interested in woodworking…and in one particular woman: Kathryn Dale Harper, host of the radio program “Homemaker Chats.”
“How best to woo her? Why, a radio show: “Grandpa Sam’s Woodshop of the Air!”
“It’s an almost-overnight sensation (for measured drawings, write to “Grandpa Sam’s” and be sure to include a 3 cent stamp to cover the cost of duplication). But – as Calvin discovers – success breeds jealousy… a dangerous thing when one’s enemy has friends in high places.
“Can Calvin and his friends save the world through woodworking, one listener at a time? Perhaps – but first, they’ll have to save themselves from Nazis, the clutches of the FBI, bureaucracy and wooden legs that break at inopportune times.
“Well, you get the idea.”
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. For those of you who wish to offer technical advice on the motorcycle shown on the cover, or the particulars of pre-war prosthetic technology etc. etc., we kindly ask that you get a girlfriend.