The Catchings Press (coming Oct. 2026)

An impossible rule. A girl who fights back.

On a hot day in 1968, while lining up for the daily dress check at school, Annette Calvert yanks out her hem. The dress represents everything she's been simmering about since her father, an ambitious journalist, bought the newspaper in Catchings, Texas: the rule-crazy high school; the powerful businessmen pulling their ads from her family’s paper; the war on TV.

Annette is tired of trying to obey an impossible rule. One week into her junior year, she gets hundreds of students to sign a petition against the dress code and presents it at a packed school board meeting that her father, afraid he’ll lose more ads, forbids her to attend.

Set against a backdrop of national turmoil not unlike that of today, The Catchings Press is about a young girl coming into her own, and a celebration of the small battles we wage in life that cause the world to change.