Nevada Stories

An introduction to Nevada Stories: the history of Reno and its neighbors, told through fiction, one short story every weekday.

Dolores Park sold a pair of boots to a woman from Connecticut on a Tuesday morning in September, and by the time the woman left the store, she was walking differently.

Frances Cole arrived in Reno on a Wednesday in October of 1921 and went directly to her attorney's office, because she was not a woman who wasted time, and because the sooner she started the clock on her residency, the sooner the clock would stop.

The tearoom occupied the ground floor of a building two doors south of the Riverside Hotel, and at ten o'clock on a Thursday morning in March it smelled of lemon oil and the particular mustiness of rooms used mostly by women.

George Turk checked the dining room twice before the doors opened, the way he checked everything twice, because in a hotel the difference between good and adequate was the things nobody noticed.

Helen Marsh arrived in Reno on the four o'clock train from the east, carrying two trunks, a hatbox, and a marriage she intended to leave on the courthouse steps.

Agnes Park walked up the hill north of town on a Monday morning in September with a carpetbag in one hand and a letter in the other, and when she reached the top she stopped and looked at what she had come for.

The depot smelled of coal smoke and pine resin and the particular sweetness of oranges carried a long way in cold air.

Willa walked to the river the morning after the law was signed and stood where her mother had stood thirty-four years before, watching something be taken.

Thomas Gray set type the way other men played piano -- by feel, without looking, his fingers finding the right letter in the case before his eyes had finished reading the word.

Rosa Morales heard the river before she saw it.

Daniel Reilly had not planned to become a lawyer in a town that barely needed one.

The law arrived in Reno on a Thursday, by telegraph, the same way everything arrived.

Margaret Wells arrived at the depot on a Tuesday in October and could not find anyone who knew exactly where the university was.

Guadalupe Morales had learned the river's moods the way you learn anything you live beside long enough — through attention and a certain amount of fear.

James Doyle came down from Virginia City in September of 1875 with three hundred and forty dollars, a bad knee, and a disposition that had not improved in the six years he had spent underground.

Bridget Fitzgerald arrived in Reno in the summer of 1874 with forty-two dollars, a trunk of clothes, and a letter of introduction that turned out to be addressed to a man who had left for Sacramento the previous winter.

Otto Kellerman arrived in Reno on the third of September, 1869, with forty dollars American, two changes of clothes, a good knife from Solingen, and no German left to speak to.

The telegram arrived on a Tuesday.

The auctioneer had a voice built for open country.

In May of 1868, Myra Lake could tell by her husband's hands that the land was already sold.