In the summer of 2022, Detra Thomas’ story began to be shared in a series of Facebook posts on the Humans of New York account. What unravelled was a story of trial, survival, redemption, and, eventually, cigars.
Detra Denise, as she’s best known, grew up in a fundamentalist Baptist family and was voted “most naive” in her Bible College. She married, had seven children, and had a traveling musical ministry with her preacher husband. When the lack of control she felt in her life became untenable, she got out of her husband’s car on the side of the road in Arkansas with nothing more than her purse and soon was on her way to New York City with her son, who lived there with his wife.
She went through months of
