Charles Donald Lowrie (1875–1925) left his Massachusetts home as a young man and hopscotched westward working as a stenographer, construction camp timekeeper, bookkeeper, railroad laborer, and traveling salesman before finding himself in Los Angeles starving and broke save for a vandalized nickel in his pocket – a nickel that would decide his fate: "heads" meant crime, "tails" meant suicide. What he couldn't know as he flipped that coin was that fate would soon deliver a 15-year "jolt" in San Quentin State Prison and a wildly unique literary career.

Teaching himself how to write by lamplight in his prison cell, Lowrie's work caught the eye of a San Francisco newspaper editor who assisted with his gaining parole after ten years. The editor immediately put him to work and My Life in Prison was birthed to overnight success, kickstarting the American prison literature genre and instigating nationwide prison reforms still in effect today.

We Heathens have striven to enhance the text that you’re about to experience as much as possible, with the first enhancement being the inclusion of Donald Lowrie's original San Quentin mugshots. We have also corrected myriad spelling and punctuation errors, in addition to updating a few archaic and hyphenated words to reflect their modern usage.

Additionally, we have added some 250 footnotes with further corrections and to supplement the text with context, clarification, and commentary as needed. We’ve also added section breaks in some of the chapters to help with Lowrie’s sometimes jarring tendency to switch topics without warning.

We were also able to locate several photos of San Quentin approximate to the period of Lowrie’s incarceration, circa 1890s–1910s, which we have included where appropriate. And, in addition to Lowrie’s mugshots, we were able to locate nearly two dozen more mugshots of inmates who populate this story, which we have placed where they seem most appropriate within the text.

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