PORTLAND, Oregon — Writer, artist, and designer Craig MackIntosh has released his debut novel, If I Should Lose You, a literary work exploring love, bonding, loss, and chance encounters that shape lives. The novel is now available worldwide through booksellers and distribution platforms.
If I Should Lose You follows a new couple: Scott MacIntyre, a reclusive artist and aspiring journalist who has long felt disconnected from the values of contemporary society. Denyse Kersey is a shrewd, quippy, and disciplined woman who recently left a difficult life in the South Bronx to begin a new life in Portland. Together, they discover a perfect connection, unveil irresistible bliss, and begin reconstructing themselves.
Then, there’s James Severen: a kid from the country whose life experience has been hard work, poverty, abuse, and neglect. He witnesses a violent flashpoint at work and immediately escapes to seek a new life.
In Portland, James encounters Scott. Ever the champion for corporal mercy, Scott offers him guidance. That single act of decency in that chance encounter catalyzes events that change everyone’s life in the periphery.
Early readers have described the novel as profoundly emotional and deeply affecting:
The impact on early readers has been palpable. One put it plainly: “Devastating. Brutal. Beautiful.” Another admitted the last third broke them, weeping for the entire third act— that no book had made them cry for longer than a moment until this one—that no book had stuck with them so long after the last page.
MackIntosh isn’t writing from a distance. The novel’s grief and tenderness were forged in his own life. The novel’s emotional themes are the residue of self-reflection since some health challenges his daughter faced shortly after birth, and his response to the reactions of his mixed-race family. For years, MackIntosh directed his energy toward family and isolated while honing his visual art, design, and a body of literature balanced with humor and empathy: capturing moments that resonate with the universal complexities of the human condition, connection, and isolation.
“If I Should Lose You represents the culmination of years spent refining both craft in writing and perspective from what I’ve learned from love relationships—especially with the balance of hilarity and tumult in my marriage and alienation from my extended family. This book is a deep, dark love letter to the world, my mother, my wife, and my mentors: heavyweights who raised me on the page like Edward Abbey, Derrick Jensen, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Cormac McCarthy, and Joseph Heller,” said MackIntosh. “It’s a story about the awe of deep connection to each other and the earth, awareness of motivations and values, levity, gratitude, grief, and the way one single instance can change another’s trajectory.”
Despite years of writing fiction, MackIntosh has never pursued publication until recently. Encouraged by the reception of his art criticism and motivated by a lifelong commitment to literature, he founded the independent publishing company Parvenu Pressworks to release his own work and support future authors under that imprint.
If I Should Lose You is available now through major online retailers and book distributors worldwide, with additional grassroots placement planned through independent bookstores.
About Craig MackIntosh
Craig MackIntosh was raised in Dundee, Oregon. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2009, studying woodworking, metalsmithing, design, and creative writing. After graduation, he relocated to South Korea, where he operated an art studio above a foundry and developed his skills in sculpture and casting aluminum furniture. He is the author of the only two authorized but yet-to-be-published books of essays examining the work of Chilean painter Raúl Pizarro. Those writings, translated into Spanish and abridged for museum distribution, helped establish his reputation as a thoughtful and incisive critic when they were disseminated at Santiago’s El Centro Gabriela Mistral (GAM). MackIntosh is a writer, artist, and furniture designer based in Portland, Oregon. He is the founder of Craig MackIntosh Art & Design and Parvenu Pressworks. If I Should Lose You is his debut novel.
Media Contact
Craig MackIntosh
Parvenu Pressworks
E: craigintosh@gmail.com
P: 503.201.1274
IG: @Craigintosh
IG: @ParvenuPressworks
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/if-i-should-lose-you-craig-mackintosh/1150370728?ean=9798234110688
