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".