This is a catch-up post from last Sunday, to be followed by this week’s story!
Anthology: Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives edited by Sarah Weinman
Story: A Nice Place to Stay by Nedra Tyre
I’ve never heard of Nedra Tyre, who published 6 crime novels during the 1950’s through 1970’s.
This was a grim little tale, with the protagonist who lived in devastating poverty until she is convicted of a crime she didn’t commit and, for the first time in her life, she has a room of her own and three solid meals a day. The fact that it’s in a women’s prison doesn’t bother her at all, which sort of proves that abject poverty is its own sort of prison.
The story begins with the following lines:
All my life I’ve wanted a nice place to stay. I don’t mean anything grand, just a small room with the walls freshly painted and a few neat pieces of furniture and a window to catch the sun so that two or three pot plants could grow.
Things spiral badly when her lawyer manages to get her conviction overturned and causes her release. When he expects her to be grateful to him, well, she’s not. She just wants to go home.