For You

While on holiday (kinda) in Edinburgh, I read a book set in Edinburgh.  I like it when my city matches what I’m reading.  I received a copy of this book from Loves Books Group Tours and took it with me on our road trip. This book is a family saga set in the late 19th century and centres on the print industry during that period. Book synopsis: Set in the thick of workers lives in Edinburgh’s thriving print industry, The Caseroom follows Iza into the arcane world of the caseroom where she learns the intricacies of a highly-skilled trade. As one of some 800 Edinburgh women who for a few decades did so, she becomes a hand-typesetter, work that had been, and was to become once more, a male preserve. Despite hostility to the cheap labour that women represent, Iza persists in work that allows her to feed her imagination on books. But holding on to her trade means hardening herself to the needs of those she loves. And when the men’s union moves to eliminate women from the caseroom and a We Women movement forms to oppose them, there is no middle ground. Torn between class and gender loyalties …