Pale Horse, Pale Rider

Three Short Novels

By: Katherine Anne Porter

Narrated by: Chelsea Stephens

The classic 1939 collection of three novellas by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author and journalist, including the famous title story set during the influenza epidemic of 1918

In Noon Wine? a family struggling to live on a farm in Texas is saved by the unexpected arrival of a mysterious stranger - only to have their world upended again by the arrival, nine years later, of a second stranger.

The three parts of Old Mortality introduce the teenager Miranda and chronicle her journey of self-discovery, as she gradually realizes her family’s romantic nostalgia for her absent uncle and late aunt bears little resemblance to the truth.

Miranda returns in the title story, Pale Horse, Pale Rider. She is now working as a drama critic for a newspaper in Denver, where she falls in love with a soldier, Adam, during the influenza epidemic of 1918. When Miranda falls ill, Adam cares for her until she is moved to a hospital. Throughout her ordeal, on everyone’s mind is “the war, the war, the WAR to end WAR, war for Democracy, for humanity, a safe world forever and ever”.

©1936, 1939 by Katherine Anne Porter; Copyright renewed 1967 by Katherine Anne Porter (P)2020 Audible, Inc.

I didn’t understand

I was confused when listening to this story. I felt like it had multiple stories in one and was all over this place.

Strange

Not sure what I expected but it was strange and hard to follow. Narrator does good.

Some of the most brilliant prose ever written

A moving description of being on the precipice separating life from death. She admirably attempts to explore the grief one experiences when only one of two escapes death. For me, Pale Horse, Pale Rider is her finest short novel.

Rules of life at another time but most interested in WW1 home pandemic

The book was a little disjointed for me. It did illustrate how life had its RULES. Most interesting today was the latter part of the story where a character was impacted by the pandemic at home during WW1.