Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Three Short Novels

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The classic 1939 collection of 3 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.” Available in this exclusive Library of America e-book edition