The Story of a House Built From Popular Mechanics Plans

The boy is ten. Standing on the shore of a lake, at the far end of a long gravel road in eastern New Hampshire. It is 1956. The mist is into the corners of everything just now. He can hardly see. He can hear someone out in that thick soup, rowing a boat on the lake. Nearby, even his father is only a shadow dropping cut lumber into piles across the small clearing they made the day before. That clearing? That's where his father is building a house. That's why they're here. His father bought a book to show himself how to do it. You can build anything, fix anything, he said, so long as you have the right book.

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