The Hunter’s Wife by Anthony Doerr, 2001
The magic trick:
A story about magic that is just as much about someone who doesn’t have magic
“The Hunter’s Wife” alternates between Montana and Chicago with 20 years in between the sections. Over the course of the backstory portion, we see the start of a marriage and its ultimate demise. More interestingly, it becomes clear that the hunter’s wife has some special spiritualism powers going on. She’s able to touch creatures as they die and see where they go in the afterlife. She also might have the ability to read people’s dreams. She certainly can tell her husband what he dreams of each night.
It’s a big enough thing that you could easily see this being the basis of a novel – not simply a long-ish short story. But it was early in Doerr’s career. Maybe he was overflowing with more ideas than publishing deals? I don’t know.
Anyway, the story sets up an interesting dichotomy. On one hand, there is the very real, very tangible, and very small world of the hunter. He loves his tiny valley in Montana, where he knows how to hunt and fish and manage the annual battle with nature. On the other, we have the hunter’s wife and her world of magic. She is thirsty for knowledge and experience. The valley in Montana couldn’t possibly hold her. She wants to see the world. She wants to push the boundaries of this world and explore other worlds. They are two people with very different needs.
Conflict, then, ensues.
And that’s quite a trick on Doerr’s part.
The selection:
In April an occasional client wanted a mountain lion or a trip with dogs for birds, but late spring and summer were for trout. He was out every morning before dawn, driving with a thermos of coffee to pick up a lawyer, a widower, a politician with a penchant for wild cutthroat. He came home stinking of fish guts and woke her with eager stories—native trout leaping fifteen-foot cataracts, a stubborn rainbow wedged under a snag.
By June she was bored and lonely. She wandered through the forest, but never very far. The summer woods were dense and busy, not like the quiet graveyard feel of winter. Nothing slept for very long; everything was emerging from cocoons, winging about, buzzing, multiplying, having litters, gaining weight. Bear cubs splashed in the river. Chicks screamed for worms. She longed for the stillness of winter, the long slumber, the bare sky, the bone-on-bone sound of bull elk knocking their antlers against trees.
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