All-Wool Morrison: Time -- Today, Place -- the United States, Period of Action -- Twenty-Four Hours

Stewart Morrison, mayor of the mill town Marion, wakes to a single day that will test everything he believes about duty, ambition, and love. The new legislative session convenes at noon, and already the streets buzz with political machinations while the looms of St. Ronan's mill thunder through the morning. Morrison carries the weight of his business heritage and the expectations of a city in transition, his principles about to collide with the ruthless arithmetic of local politics. Colonel Shaw challenges the mill's old traditions. Mac Tavish, the paymaster, watches with quiet loyalty. And Lana Corson has returned to Marion, throwing into sharp relief whatever Morrison thought he wanted from his life and his city. The day unspools through committee rooms and factory floors, through political maneuvering and the hum of machinery, as Morrison discovers that leadership often means choosing which loyalties to betray. Holman Day captures the raw energy of early 20th-century America in this compressed, intense portrait of one man balancing the accounts of his public and private selves. The twenty-four-hour timeframe lends the novel a tensile urgency, as if Marion itself holds its breath, waiting to see what kind of mayor, what kind of man, Morrison will choose to be.