His Iron Compass

Hattie Vance runs the last working forge in a mountain town, and the road that keeps the town fed is a road nobody talks about in daylight. When a convoy captain commissions a compass from her, Hattie doesn't ask why. Elias Kade is tall, quiet, eats last at every meal, and comes back to her shop three days in a row with no good reason. He is not a man who says what he wants, and she is not a woman who asks. Then one night she sees what the second wagon carries, and every easy meal the town has eaten for two winters turns to ash in her mouth. Hattie does what a smith does. She builds him an honest compass — and it points home. He turns the whole convoy around at the pass. There is a price for that. There is always a price. Hattie's forge will burn, they will run the river road with one wagon and a mule, and at the end of it she is going to be standing at an anvil in a river town, teaching the man who broke the road how to run a bellows. A post-apocalyptic romance about iron, road-men, and a needle that won't lie.