Story Du Jour #20

All Story Du Jour tales are available online and free! A small offering in these trying times.

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"The Hunter's Wife" - by Anthony Doerr

9,393 words

Life and death share the same compartment in a touching tale of dreams.

Here's a sample of the writing:

"Around noon Marlin Spokes, a snowplough driver the hunter knew from grade school, slid off the Sun River Bridge in his plough and dropped forty feet into the river. He was dead before they could get him out of the truck. She was reading in the library, a block away, and heard the plough crash into the riverbed like a thousand dropped girders. When she got to the bridge, sprinting in her jeans and T-shirt, men were already in the water—a telephone man from Helena, a jeweler, a butcher in his apron, all of them had scrambled down the banks and were wading in the rapids, prying the door open. The men lifted Marlin from the cab, stumbling as they carried him. Steam rose from their shoulders and from the crushed hood of the plough. She careened down the snow-covered slope and splashed to them. Her hand on the jeweler's arm, her leg against the butcher's leg, she reached for Marlin's ankle."

Are the stories getting longer? Seems so. But the well-written ones read fast.