Nevada Stories

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

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.