Lewis Eads built the house himself over two summers below the Medicine Bow mountains, every board of it, for a mail-order bride he had never met. It is his pride. On her third morning in it he comes into the kitchen at dawn and finds her on her knees with his door off its hinges and a plane in her hand, the shavings curling thin enough to see the sunrise through.

Every door in his house sticks, or swings, or will not latch. Amelia grew up in her father's shipyard in Maine, hanging cabin doors that had to close in a heavy sea. She meant to mend them quietly so he would never know. Now he does, and a proud man who built everything alone has to decide what to do with a wife who can build it better.

A gentle frontier marriage story about pride, craft and learning to be taught. The Porch Ledger tells original fiction: every person here is invented, and everyone in the story is a grown adult. If you love a quiet, capable heroine, subscribe, and another story is waiting.