" Mrs. Durnell, too, had saved up to build a more substantial house, prevailing over stubborn male contractors. The fireplace, Wilder wrote, was “made according to Mrs. Durnell’s own plan, with a chimney that draws even though she had to stand by the mason as he was building it and insist that he build it as she directed.”31 Here Wilder began a thread that would run through all of her work and appear in her daughter’s as well. Women must assert their authority, she believed; it would pay off in the end. "

― Caroline Fraser , Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder