The Iron Woman

The Iron Woman is a novel written by Margaret Deland and originally published in installments between 1910 and 1911.

Set in the nineteenth century in the town of Mercer, a fictional town representing Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), the novel tells the story of the elderly and widowed Mrs. Maitland. She has a business with an iron mill that in principle should be inherited by her son Blair.

However, her son does not share his mother's values and puritanical work ethic, and she distances herself from him. In addition, he is in love with a young woman whose marriage his mother disapproves of.

With a slow and leisurely pace, the novel makes fantastic descriptions of the mills and the particular beauty in the processing of iron.

" 'Climb up in this tree, and play house!' Elizabeth Ferguson commanded. She herself had climbed to the lowest branch of an apple-tree in the Maitland orchard, and sat there, swinging her white-stockinged legs so recklessly that the three children whom she had summoned to her side, backed away for safety..."