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The Hammer
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 27 2026
Pages: 212
Weight: 0.55
Height: 0.48 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
He buried his father at ten o'clock that morning. At nine that night he walked out for the biggest fight of his life.
The first bell rings and the first thing he thinks about is a spit bucket - because that's how grief comes at you. Sideways, through the small door you forgot to lock.
The man across the ring is twenty-four, undefeated, and holding all three belts, including the two this fight was supposed to win back. Twelve thousand people are in the building. The cameras that were at the church this morning are at the arena tonight, because somebody in a suit figured out there was no better story in sports than a man burying his trainer and fighting the same day, and he was right about that.
What none of them know is anything about the man who built him. Feet set, weight down, chin tucked, hands home by the jaw where they belong - every inch of it taught by a man who took a mean skinny boy nobody had a use for and made him into something.
He wasn't his father by blood. He was his father by showing up, every day, for twenty years.
THE HAMMER is a novel about fathers and sons, about the trade of one man's life for another's, and about what a son owes the man who made him.
Blood makes relatives. Showing up makes a father.
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