Week 43 (2026) Reading – Katherine Anne Porter & Anahid Nersessian

Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider is actually three short novellas that were originally published in 1939. Old Mortality spans several decades in the lives of two sisters who grow up in the shadow of their deceased Aunt Amy, a woman who is obsessively romanticized by their family. She is a woman they can never seem to live up to, but as they grow up they begin to hear stories that crack open the image of their seemingly perfect Aunt. In Noon Wine, a couple hire an itinerant Swede, who helps make their dairy farm become more profitable over the years. They accept him as family, even though he rarely speaks and they know little about him. This changes dramatically when a bounty hunter shows up, claiming that the Swede is a murderer. In the title novella, a woman and a young soldier fall in love, just before he is to be shipped across the Atlantic to fight in World War I. She falls ill during the infamous Spanish influenza pandemic and nearly dies, which provides her with…