This series delves into the lives of young men navigating the rugged American-Mexican border at the turn of the 20th century. It paints a vivid picture of a land where untamed wilderness clashes with civilization, and dreams often come at the price of bloodshed. The narratives explore profound themes of coming-of-age, the loss of innocence, and the search for identity in a harsh and unforgiving landscape. It offers an epic portrayal of a lost era in American history, examining universal experiences of responsibility, revenge, and survival.
The first book in a trilogy centreing on John Grady Cole, the last survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers , who runs off to Mexico after his mother sells their ranch and cuts him off from the only life he has ever wanted; This title is also available as a film.
In the 1930s, two teenage brothers whose ranch in New Mexico was raided by bandits cross into Mexico to search for stolen horses. The novel follows them through the revolution-torn countryside, meeting soldiers, peasants, priests and thieves, all proffering advice. By the author of "All the Pretty Horses."
The completed trilogy emerges as a landmark in American literature' Guardian
Cormac McCarthy’s award-winning, bestselling trio of novels chronicles the coming-of-age of two young men in the south west of America. John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, two cowboys of the old school, are poised on the edge of a world about to change forever. Their journeys across the border into Mexico, each an adventure fraught with fear and pain, mark a passage into adulthood, and eventual salvation. In All the Pretty Horses, young John Grady Cole, dispossessed by the sale of his family’s Texas ranch, heads across the border in search of the cowboy life, where he finds a job breaking horses, and a dangerously ill-fated romance. In The Crossing, sixteen-year-old Billy Parham captures a wolf that has been marauding his family’s ranch and, instead of killing it, decides to take it on a perilous journey home to the mountains of Mexico.These two drifters come together years later in Cities of the Plain, a magnificent tale of friendship and passion. In the vanishing world of the Old West, blood and violence are conditions of life. Beautiful and brutal, filled with sorrow and humour, The Border Trilogy is both an epic love story and a fierce elegy for the American frontier.