Crossing – McCarthy Cormac (2022)

Set along the US-Mexico border in the 1940s, Cormac McCarthy’s legendary Border Trilogy continues with The Crossing, a coming-of-age western unfolding alongside the events of All the Pretty Horses. Sixteen-year-old Billy Parham and his younger brother Boyd are fascinated by an elusive wolf that has been raiding their family property. Billy captures the animal but, rather than kill it, impulsively sets out for the mountains of Mexico to return it to where it came from. When he returns, he finds himself and his world irrevocably changed. His innocence lost at a cruel price, the desolate beauty of the border beckons once again. Beautiful and dangerous, The Crossing is the second volume in the Border Trilogy, preceded by All the Pretty Horses and followed by Cities of the Plain. The trilogy’s books are nominally westerns, but their entropic and philosophical qualities reach beyond the limits of the genre, summoning the ghosts of history and haunting the gaps between justice and reality. This English-language paperback is part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.