Pale Horse, Pale Rider

The classic 1939 collection of three short novels, including the famous title story set during the flu epidemic of 1918.

From the gothic Old South to revolutionary Mexico, few writers evoke such a multitude of worlds, both exterior and interior, as powerfully as Katherine Anne Porter. This sharp collection of three short novels includes “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” Porter's most celebrated story, where a young woman lies in a fever during the influenza epidemic, her childhood memories mingling with fears for her boyfriend on his way to war. Also included is “Noon Wine,” a haunting story of tragedy and scandal on a small dairy farm in Texas, and “Old Mortality,” a story of discovering family truths and self-discovery. Pale Horse, Pale Rider unites the finest work from one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

"[Porter's] stories rank among the best in American literature." - The Guardian

"Few writers in America or anywhere else have matched [Porter's] powers of deep poetic concentration, her intelligence, her responsiveness to the inner life of her characters, her sharp sense of the pressing forces of history, nationality, and social atmosphere." - New Republic

"Miss Porter’s best stories are so transparent that they disappear as stories, as style, as literature, while leaving the humanity of their pictures wordlessly intact." - New York Review of Books

“Katherine Anne Porter moves in the illustrious company headed by Hawthorne, Flaubert, and Henry James.”