  We present a microscopic model of interacting fermions where the ground state
degeneracy is topologically protected. The model is based on a double-wire
setup with local interactions in a particle number conserving setting. A
compelling property of this model is the exact solvability for its ground
states and low energy excitations. We demonstrate the appearance of
topologically protected edge states and derive their braiding properties on a
microscopic level. We find the non-abelian statistics of Ising anyons, which
can be interpreted as Majorana-like edge states.
