Border Trilogy Series Collection 3 Books Set By Cormac McCarthy

The Border Trilogy series collection brings together three novels by Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, Cities of the Plain and The Crossing. Set among the ranches and borderlands of the American South West and Mexico, the trilogy follows young men shaped by unforgiving landscapes, shifting frontiers and the consequences of their decisions.

Across these three books, McCarthy writes of friendship, passion and loss, with journeys that move between barren beauty and a world that is both rugged and cruelly civilised. From a love described as dangerous and inevitable to a homecoming that leaves everything irrevocably altered, the collection traces lives marked by responsibility, revenge and survival.

Included titles

• All the Pretty Horses
• Cities of the Plain
• The Crossing

Key details

• Three-book Border Trilogy collection
• Written by Cormac McCarthy
• Includes All the Pretty Horses, Cities of the Plain and The Crossing

Synopses

All the Pretty Horses

Two boys set out on a journey and befriend a third, encountering a country beyond what they imagined: barren and beautiful, rugged yet cruelly civilised. Dreams come at a cost, in a story described as both a grand love story and a novel of childhood passing, innocence and a vanished American age. It is presented as a parable of responsibility, revenge and survival.

Cities of the Plain

In the autumn of 1952, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham work as cowboys on a New Mexico ranch as the military presses in from the north. To the south, the mountains of Mexico draw one of the men back time and again. The novel centres on friendship and passion, and a love said to be as dangerous as it is inevitable.

The Crossing

Set on south-western ranches in the years before the Second World War, the story follows sixteen-year-old Billy Parham and his younger brother, Boyd. After capturing an elusive wolf that has been marauding his family’s property, Billy decides not to kill it and instead heads for the mountains of Mexico to return it.

When he comes home, he finds his world irrevocably changed. His loss of innocence has come at a price, and the border calls once more with desolate beauty and a cruel promise.