The Crossing

Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy includes a book called After All the Pretty Horses, whose literary power is equaled only by its depth of understanding and range of experience. Billy and Boyd Parham are young boys living in the years leading up to World War II in a remote area of New Mexico on the edge of the unthinkable. A trespassing Indian and a dream of wolves roaming wild among the cattle that the settlers have just brought into the plain emerge first; at this time, all of the trappers' knowledge has vanished along with them. At sixteen, Billy unintentionally embarks on a voyage into the souls of men, animals, and boys.

He is long gone, having imprisoned a she-wolf he would restore to the Mexican highlands, and when he returns, everything he left behind has completely changed during his absence. With the exception of his younger brother Boyd, with whom he reclaims what is rightfully theirs, entering "that antique gaze from whence there could be no way back forever."

Instead, they discover a remarkable array of carnivals and fiestas, canines, equines, and hawks, as well as pilgrims and revolutionaries, opulent mansions and abandoned cantinas, bandits, nomadic tribes, gypsies, and wandering girls. They also discover a little girl who is alone on the road, a mystery in the mountainous wilderness, and a tale in the making.

They wage a battle as fierce in this larger universe as the one that none of them would ultimately enlist in for their own country. While one brother discovers his destiny, the other sibling just reaches it.

The Crossing, the captivating second section of Cormac McCarthy's continuing trilogy, is a must-read book that is both luminous and horrifying. It has the ability to simultaneously touch, halt, and start the reader's heart and head.