The Caseroom

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SALTIRE FIRST BOOK AWARDTorn between class and gender loyalties and embroiled in a bitter labour dispute, Iza must choose sides.Set in the thick of workers' lives, in Edinburgh's thriving print industry, The Caseroom follows thirteen-year-old 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, Iza 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.