Winter on this ridge is five months long. Not three bad days. Five months. My grandmother Ruth was widowed in the winter of 1934 with three children and the nearest neighbour a mile off. Her pencil ledger is how that house got through: what she bought in October and what she never bought, where the lamp went and where it never went, how much water, how much salt, how many quilts on which bed. I have lived in that house most of my life, and I have spent the last few years checking every line against what the people who study these things know now. Ruth's Winter House is what came out of it. 49 pages, 38 chapters in ten parts: the list, the heat, the bed and the body, light and power, the air, water, the pantry, the store lists from the videos, and the people. Five printable cards for the fridge and the back door. Every chapter runs the same five beats: the day I learned it · what it meant, with the numbers · how to tell, in your own house tonight · what it will not do · and what to do. Every safety number is the published guidance of a named agency (CDC, NFPA, USDA, EPA, Ready.gov, the Red Cross, the National Institute on Aging), and the book says which. Inside: the October list on the back of a seed packet. Heating the person, not the room. The space heater rules. The alarm with the date on the back, and what carbon monoxide does. A gallon a person a day, and where the shutoff is. The freezer when the power goes: 48 hours, 24, 4. The Dollar Tree list and the Costco list from the videos, with what each item will not do. The cold that does not shiver. Ruth's Ledger comes with it, free: 52 pages of her kitchen book of the old ways, the crocks, the brine, the cellar and the seasonal round. Instant download. Seven-day, every-dollar guarantee, and the books stay on your shelf either way.