The psychological pressures of poverty and debt are the main cause of the Day family murders. Financial struggles motivate Patty to engineer her own murder, providing the starting point for the novel’s events. Her intention to have herself killed to ensure her family’s financial stability is not revealed until the end. However, her actions throughout the novel demonstrate how heavily her financial circumstances weigh on her mind and how adversely they affect her mental, physical, and emotional well-being. Len’s description of the bank’s imminent foreclosure shows the direness of Patty’s situation: “Patty, the only way to fix this is money. Now. If you want to keep this place. I’m talking borrow, beg, or steal” (68). The situation pushes Patty to make a desperate, radical decision in the hopes that her children can use the money from her murder to have a better life.

Calvin understands Patty’s situation because he too lost his farm after the Farm Boom of the 1970s came to an end. As Patty explains in Chapter 6, in the early 70s, the value of land was rising. President Nixon’s administration encouraged farmers to borrow and spend aggressively, using the slogan “Plant fencepost to fencepost” (64). Banks gave huge loans with low interest rates to farmers, and many, like the Days, overextended themselves financially.