All the Pretty Horses

Summary

In 1949, a sixteen-year-old Texan named John Grady Cole rides south into Mexico with a friend in search of the cowboy life that is vanishing on the American side of the border. What begins as a romantic adventure tightens into a hard reckoning with violence, class, and the limits of personal honor. McCarthy's elevated, biblical prose and stark moral landscape made the book both a literary event and a popular success.