In the fall of 1927 and the winter of 1928, while Katherine Anne Porter was living in Salem, Massachusetts, and completing genealogical research for a biography of Cotton Mather, she was inspired to research her own family history as a first step toward an autobiographical novel she intended to write. Although that novel, which she tentatively titled “Many Redeemers”, was never completed as a coherent whole, parts of it became the basis for various sketches, short stories, and short novels. Old Mortality, The Old Order, and Pale Horse, Pale Rider, all sections of the unfinished novel, constitute the so-called “Miranda Cycle” within Porter’s oeuvre.

Pale Horse, Pale Rider

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