Porter is a nominally fictionalized story about the 1905 murder of David Varney, the ensuing search for, arrest and trial of his grandnephew, Wesley Chick. But there is more to the story than that.

Porter, Maine in 1905 is not as pastoral as one might think. There is clear distinction between the educated and the uneducated, the literate and the illiterate, the wealthy and the poor, the farmer and the manufacturer, the worker and the supervisor. The further we move from the center of commerce in the village of Kezar Falls the harsher life becomes in Porter. Many of the country folk have been content to live on their small farms and subsist on what they can grow and trade for. As the twentieth century dawns on Porter, others lust for more: more money, more material, more modernity, and more love. But they are not certain how to attain it. They have not been taught.

The majority of the residents are related by blood, marriage or both, and sometimes more than once and twice over. Oftentimes there are relations considered taboo as is suggested in this story between David Varney and his sixteen-year-old step-daughter and Wesley Chick and his first cousin, Hattie Douglass.