Iron & Ashes: A Measure Set in Steel

Coming soon from Monroe St. Press and John Spencer, author of the Surge Series and Last Ride On The Galena Coach Road and Other Tales:

  Iron & Ashes, a literary cycle—part epic poem, part lyric narrative, part stage play, part novel—set in late 20th century Illinois, where progress presses against memory, and shortcuts threaten to erase what still holds.

Some roads aren’t remembered. They’re measured.

Along a worn stretch of U.S. 40 near Effingham, Illinois, in the late 1970s, a scrapyard sits just off the road—ordered with a precision that borders on reverence. Nothing there is accidental. Nothing is wasted. Every piece of metal, every tool, every remnant of industry is placed, accounted for.

The man who keeps it that way is Silas Vance. He is not a dreamer. Not a man given to abstractions.

He is a builder. An octogenarian engineer.

A man who has seen the great works of the world—canals cut through continents, steel raised into skylines—and who has chosen, deliberately, to step away from wealth and status into something quieter… but no less exacting.

And yet—he is not alone. There is a presence in that yard. A witness.

Arthur. A son who never came home from the Second World War.

 

 

 

In Iron & Ashes by John Spencer, the past does not fade. It stands. It watches. It measures.

As Effingham begins to grow—pushed by the same restless force that has always driven expansion along the old roads—pressure mounts. Land is wanted. Deals are made. Corners are cut. Lines are bent.

But some men do not bend.

And some places do not yield without being measured first.

 In Iron & Ashes, Spencer utilizes the plumb bob as a central metaphor, representing Silas Vance's unbending moral compass. It symbolizes the conflict between individual craftsmanship and the destructive fires of  progress. A Scriptural image, used by Old Testament prophets to call attention to ancient Israel's departure from the straight and true. 

As an engineer of the old school, Vance uses his literal and metaphorical plumb line to expose crooked shortcuts, legal loopholes, and ethical compromises, and forces the town to look at what they are losing in the name of progress.

However, this is not a story about resisting change. It is about judging it. About whether what is built stands true… or comes up crooked.

Setting Iron & Ashes along U.S. 40 is also significant. Originally, this was the National Road, commissioned by Thomas Jefferson in 1806 as the first federally funded highway. It carved through the wilderness to open Illinois to pioneer settlement. Effingham grew out of the dirt along this original trail. 

With the explosion of the automobile in the 20th century, it became U.S. Route 40, the "Main Street of America", lined with mom-and-pop gas stations, diners, and yards that served a traveling nation. 

By the 1970s, however, it had been superseded by Interstate 70, which bypassed local businesses. Towns began to decline and developers stepped in to clear out the old landscape for corporate expansion, and this is the historical turning point that inspires the conflict in Iron & Ashes. 

This story, like John Spencer's other stories, demands that the reader stop and look vertically, by the steady weight of the plumb line. From the perilous freedom trails of the antebellum Surge series, to walking the restless paths of the Galena Coach Road, or standing with Silas Vance amidst the iron and ancestral ashes of an Effingham scrapyard, the lesson remains the same. 

The road runs through it all.

And it keeps its own account.

Iron & Ashes—Coming Summer 2026.