Katherine Anne Porter particularly detested the word "novella", considering it an insult, at best. It was akin to calling a shovel a digging implement; Pale Horse, Pale Rider was generally classified by critics and reviewers as a novella, but Porter refuted this, calling it instead a collection of three short novels - Noon Wine, Old Mortality and Pale Horse, Pale Rider = that bore relation to each other, and that were bound together by the theme of death.
The title story tells the tale of Miranda, a newspaper editor, and Adam, a soldier; when Miranda contracts influenza Adam tends to her but when she recovers she learns that Adam has died from the disease which he probably caught from her whilst he was looking after her. Not only is the story considered to be Porter's best, and one of the greatest short novels written in the twentieth century, it is also a work that is used by historians as a first person narrative account of the influenza epidemic of 1918 which was particularly virulent in Denver, Colorado, where the story is set and where Porter herself lived at the time of the epidemic.
The two other short novels in the book are both Biblical in nature but relate strongly to the book's title. The title is taken from the Book of Revelation in which the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are the conquerors of War, which rides a red horse, Famine, whose steed is black, and Death, the rider of the pale horse. The Pale Rider in the title story is the influenza, which brings death to an entire generation of people who have ironically returned safely from World War I.
Porter had quite a lot of experience with infectious diseases, having spent much of her childhood suffering from weak health, including a bout with tuberculosis, for which she was hospitalized in a sanatorium for two years, during which she decided that she would become a writer. She became a journalist and was a popular gossip columnist. Although she produced a number of successful novels she is better known for her short stories. She became an elected member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1943 having already received the Annual Gold Medal for Literature from the Society of Libraries of NYU for Pale Horse, Pale Rider. In time, she was also the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and the U.S. National Book Award for her collected stories.
Porter changed course a little and became a literature professor with a flamboyant teaching style that resonated well with her students. She passed away in 1980, at the age of ninety.
