If I Should Lose You is a deep, dark love letter to the world. It awakens desperation for a more numinous life.
PORTLAND, OR, UNITED STATES, June 30, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — 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.
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Scott MacIntyre, a reclusive artist and aspiring journalist who has long felt disconnected from the values of contemporary society, and Denyse Kersey, 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, he runs into Scott, ever the champion for corporal mercy, who offers him guidance. That single act of decency in that chance encounter catalyzes events that change everyone’s life in the periphery.
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Advance 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 — that no book had made them weep for longer than a moment until this one. All readers have said that the story weighed them down for days.
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, maturation, reckoning with health challenges his daughter faced shortly after birth, and the response and reaction of his mixed-race family. For years, MackIntosh directed his energy toward family. It isolated him while honing his visual art, design, and a body of literature focused on empathy: capturing moments that resonate with the universal complexities of the human condition, isolation, love, and connection.
“The novel 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: the greats 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, gratitude, darkness, love, grief, and the way you can identify monumental instances that change so many others’ trajectories. Being cognizant of those moments raises self-awareness: awareness of gratitude and necessary reflection to avoid blunders.”
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.
Parvenu Pressworks
W: www.craigmacintosh.com
IG: @ParvenuPressworks
IG: @Craigintosh
BlueSky: @craigmackintosh.com
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/if-i-should-lose-you-craig-mackintosh/1150370728?ean=9798234110688
Craig MackIntosh
Parvenu Pressworks
craigintosh@gmail.com
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