This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this week's episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Louise Erdrick read her story,

Love of My Days, from the June 2nd, 2025 issue of the magazine.

Erdrich is the author of more than two dozen works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry,

including the novels The Roundhouse, which won the National Book Award in 2012,

the Knight Watchman, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2021,

and The Mighty Red, which was published last year. Now here's Louise Erdrick.

Love of My Days.

This happened on the table-flat plains before most farms had telephones. So these incidents came about

because news traveled slow. Early one morning, Jake Weir went to town to see about a mixture of

grains for his horses. When he returned to his farm and went into the house, he saw a stranger

sitting at his table. What are you doing here? Both men said this at the same time.

This is my house, said Weir. You are mistaken, said the stranger. I must ask you to leave, said

Weir. You're the one who should leave. I must ask you to leave, said Weir.

You're the one who should leave.

I guess I'll have to go back to town and get the sheriff.

Go get him then. I don't care.

The man stood up. He wasn't large or threatening, or red-haired or dark-haired or blonde.

Everything about him was middling,

hair, height, face, age. Weir was confused by the man's unusual conviction, though. He half believed that the man did own the place, although he himself had bought it the previous year. Yet maybe there was some

odd reason that the man had a claim. Weir got back into his good black buggy and turned around,

...