The Rider Was Lost by Nancy Hale, 1936
The magic trick:
Linear rambling
This is an early Nancy Hale story, set in Virginia among horse country. It’s kind of rambling, yet it moves linearly. You keep expecting it to fold back into itself with different metaphors, callbacks, or surprise reveals, but, no – it just keeps moving in a straight line toward its conclusion.
In that way, it feels like Hale’s apprenticeship stage; a story that would be denser and more nuanced had she written it a decade later.
But as it stands, we do get a very interesting relationship to consider. On one hand, it’s presented as an ideal marriage. Nine-plus years. They know each other so deeply, they don’t even have to talk. But it’s also fragile. The husband is a childlike playboy, desperately needy to validate himself every single day. So when the woman suffers a serious riding accident, the marriage is thrown into chaos.
I’m not sure what to make of it all. As I said, it isn’t her finest work by a long shot. But it’s interesting.
And that’s quite a trick on Hale’s part.
The selection:
With a great reach they overtopped the rolling mess; it was half a field before he could pull his horse up. He cantered back, dismounted, pulled the horse off Mary spoke to her …
It was nearly two o’clock when the ambulance from Washington labored up the narrow, rutted road into the fields and Mary was carried to it.
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